


The fire in which we burn

by kellsbells



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Also cousins in love, F/F, Kalex, Major characters die here, Memory Alteration, No SuperCorp endgame here, Red Kryptonite, not necessarily forever, romantic kalex, some may consider this incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2020-03-05 20:48:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 44,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18836506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kellsbells/pseuds/kellsbells
Summary: The President dismisses Kara from the DEO, and Alex is forced to have her memories of Kara altered. Kara feels adrift and alone and like she's losing everything. This is not the best time for some unnamed party to slip some Red Kryptonite into her coffee. Well, not the best time for her, at least. But for someone who wants to watch everything that Supergirl stands for burn to the ground, it's the perfect time.Red K, Harun-El, memory loss and a Kryptonian in pain. What could go wrong?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Argyle_S](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyle_S/gifts).



> For Molly on her birthday. As promised, here's some angst. The happy ending part... well, that comes later. Hope you enjoy :)  
> Btw - the alternative title was "Molly, you in danger girl!" Just because my wife says that every time I mention you. :)

Part One

* * *

 

_“I thank you for your service, but you are dismissed, effective immediately. I hope you’ll comply; the United States does not want a war with Supergirl.”_

_“Then I trust you won’t start one.”_

Kara flew through clouds, high above the US, high enough that the land below looked like a swarm of fireflies viewed through mist. She was crying, great gasping sobs that made her feel like her lungs were ripping into pieces. She would never make a different decision. She wouldn’t – couldn’t - put her family and friends at risk by making her human identity public. Especially now, when the political tide was turning in a way that she had never imagined.  She had been having nightmares of Earth X and their concentration camps for weeks. Only in her dreams, the camps were full of aliens, arms branded with numbers – including her own - and when she looked up at the fences surrounding them, she saw heads decorating the posts. One with long blonde hair. One with short red hair. Another with no hair. Another with long black hair.

 

_Eliza. Alex. Jimmy. Lena._

Inside the camp beside her stood Brainy and Nia, M’gann and J’onn. Mon-El. Brian. Darla. Imra. President Marsdin. All of the aliens who’d survived the Cadmus attack on the bar the year before. They were holding hands, all of them praying to their various gods. Kara heard guns being cocked. She turned to see soldiers raising their guns. The soldiers - they were her friends from the DEO. Vasquez. Daniels.  Adebayo, whose kid she’d taken flying the month before as a birthday present. All smiling, eyes glinting coldly. Then the firing started, and Kara watched her alien friends die before she, too, was cut down.

 

The last thing she saw before she woke from the dreams, screaming, was Alex’s head on the fence, the word _Traitor_ burned into her forehead.

 

As she floated in the air, she thought about the President’s face, the smug expression, the way he had seemed to be almost goading her into starting a war with the US.

 

She screamed into the night air, screamed until she was hoarse, screamed until she was weak with the pain of it. Some time after she flew back to her apartment to sleep. Alex wasn’t there. Kara had told Alex to go on the date she had scheduled two weeks previous. It was better for everyone concerned. Alex didn’t need to know about these nightmares. This was Kara’s burden. She should have known that the Graves siblings were doing something more serious than just attacking the President. They had wanted to out her, and they did their work well. If Kara had just been smarter, or a little quicker, they never would have been able to get the footage of President Marsdin shifting for a split-second. Things never would have turned the way they had, so hostile and terrifying.

 

She cried her heart out that night, then again when she woke from the same nightmare of Earth X, and by the time she woke the next morning from her fitful sleep, she was exhausted; heartsick, miserable and lost.

A few weeks passed, and the downward spiral of the country and of her life continued. The Children of Liberty, Manchester Black’s betrayal, the Monitor, the alternate Alex. The Elite. It was all too much, and it was going to come to a head, she knew. And when it did, she didn’t think she would be strong enough. Even steel could break under the right pressure.

 

She reached that breaking point when Colonel Haley told her that she knew Supergirl’s secret identity. The woman laid it all out for Kara and for Alex, sneering and smug at her discovery. Kara was going to do exactly as she was ordered or her identity would be made public. Haley would see to it that her identity was made known to all in the most public way possible, and all of the people she loved would immediately be at risk to anyone who had an issue with Supergirl. It was Kara’s worst nightmare come true, the reason that she’d hidden herself as an unremarkable human for her first 12 years on Earth. She watched Colonel Haley crow about her victory, about having Supergirl as her personal weapon, only to be stunned into speechlessness as Alex knocked the woman out when she was in mid-sentence.

 

She thought, for a moment, when J’onn had wiped those memories from Haley’s mind, that things were about to get better. Sure, the government still had their truth-seeker, but all of the DEO agents who knew her identity had agreed to have their minds wiped by J’onn. It was fine. She woke up the morning after feeling safer, better.

 

She picked up her usual order from Noonan’s, a coffee that was handed to her by a new barista, and she took a moment to appreciate the heat and sweetness. It even made her mood pick up just a little. She didn’t see the momentary red burning lines cross her face, and didn’t question the quick upturn in her mood as the Red Kryptonite started doing its work. Her day just got better, and even Snapper couldn’t piss her off, though he tried. She knew she was too good to work for him, but that was an issue she would solve another day.

 

Later that day J’onn called her to his new PI office. She found Alex there, a sad and guilty look on her face. J’onn broke the news gently that Alex was also going to have her memories altered, and that she was going to forget that her sister Kara was also Supergirl. That her sister was an alien. Kara cried, but the tears weren’t enough. She felt like she was going insane. The one person that she loved more than any other, the one person who had made her feel at home on this planet… she was going to have to give her up. She was going to lose _Alex_. She was completely devastated, lost in a way that she hadn’t been since Krypton exploded behind her and shot her into the Phantom Zone, alone. But more than that, she was _angry_. The President was systematically chipping away at her personal life, taking away the things that were most important to her. Her veins blazed red just as J’onn put his hand on Alex’s head, and Alex’s eyes opened wide for a second before J’onn’s influence started to erase everything she knew about Kara being Supergirl. Kara turned away, snarling silently, and started to plan. She needed to deal with the President, but carefully. Maybe she’d take away the things _he_ loved first.

 

***

 

Lena noticed that her best friend was acting a little… different, from usual. Kara was normally a nervous, stuttering kind of person, with the sweetest heart and the most sincere smile that Lena had ever come across. Today though, her eyes were cold. She was clearly angry about something, and Lena didn’t know if she had the courage to ask her about it when she was acting like this. It was like when they had to deploy the lead-seeding device and Kara’s boyfriend had been sent off-planet for good. Kara had been cold then, too. Empty and cold and even rude sometimes. But this… it seemed like more. Lena had never truly seen Kara angry, and this seemed to be a cold, hard anger that she would never have expected from her best friend.  

 

She took a deep breath and forced herself to speak. This was Kara, her best friend. She had to be a listening ear for her friend, right? Even if Kara was frightening her.  

 

“Kara, are you okay?” she asked, quietly, chopsticks playing with her Szechuan beef and noodles.

 

Kara’s head snapped up. Lena was sure, for a second, that she saw something fiery and red cross Kara’s face, but she dismissed it. She was, after all, extremely tired as always. She’d been at the office until 4am and had returned at 8.30am, and she’d forgotten to eat until Kara arrived at lunchtime with her usual Chinese food order.

 

“Why do you ask?” Kara asked, grinning. For some reason, the grin made Lena think of a shark’s teeth. She shivered.

 

“You just seem… a little off, today. Has someone done something to upset you, darling?” Lena asked, ploughing on despite her discomfort.

 

“Well, you know how it is. There’s always someone trying to take away the things you love, am I right?” Kara said, breezily, stuffing egg rolls into her mouth.

 

“Uh… huh?” Lena said, frowning. “That sounds kind of serious.”

 

Kara laughed, a light, airy sort of thing that didn’t suit her at all.

 

“Oh, it’s nothing. I’m going to take care of it, and then everything will be back to the way it should be. You’re sweet to worry.”

 

Her smile this time was calculating, and her eyes were just as cold as that of the shark Lena had seen at the aquarium when she was 7 years old. It had looked at her, those teeth grinning, and she’d screamed the whole way to the car, where Lillian slapped her. Her darling mother had dragged her into the closet behind the kitchen and left her there for two days in the dark. It wasn’t a pleasant memory, and the fact that Kara had reminded her of that was, quite frankly, terrifying.

 

Lena smiled back even as her heart rate increased. She swallowed, looking back down at her food.

 

Kara’s hand appeared in her view and tipped her head up gently.

 

“Is something wrong with you, Lena?” she asked, tipping her head to one side like a predator sizing up its next meal.

 

Lena swallowed again.

 

“No, not at all, Kara,” she said, all of the hairs on her body standing on end. Kara laughed that weird, airy laugh again, and Lena blinked rapidly.

 

“Uh huh,” Kara said, grinning. She stood suddenly, pulling Lena up with her. Lena expected to see her food spilling onto the floor from where it had been sitting on her lap, but somehow the food was set neatly on the desk, and she was pressed against Kara’s body firmly. She looked up into those blue eyes and stared in terror.

 

“I know you want me, Lena. I’ve always known. But I’m afraid I love another. If that doesn’t work out, though, I’ll be sure to look you up. You always smell… So. Good.”

 

Kara buried her head in Lena’s neck, sniffing deeply.

 

“Delicious,” she said, as she lifted her head again. “I’ll definitely keep you in mind, _darling._ ”

 

Her tone was deeply mocking, and Lena reddened, tears springing up in her eyes. Kara chuckled, her voice low.

 

“Aw, baby. Did I hurt you? I’m so sorry. But you know, you’re not my first choice. And maybe – just maybe – you’re no-one’s first choice, because you’re just never going to be good enough. Do you ever think about that?”

 

Lena sobbed, her heart tearing itself to pieces.

 

“Make sure you eat, darling. It wouldn’t do if you weren’t in good condition when I come back to see you now, would it?”

 

Lena whimpered as Kara leaned down to kiss her lightly on the mouth.

 

“Later, Luthor,” she said, turning and flouncing out of the office, hips swaying. She looked back and smiled coldly once again, putting a finger on her lips and whispering ‘shh’ at Lena. Then she was gone.

 

Lena sat there for maybe ten minutes before she moved, and then it was to throw up. Her office door was open, and Jess came running to her side. She held her hair back, and when Lena was done throwing up she got her some water and accompanied her to her private bathroom where she carefully and tenderly washed the chunks of vomit from Lena’s hair.

 

“What happened, Miss Luthor?” she asked, when Lena was sitting on a chair in her bathroom, whole body trembling.

 

“I…” she tried, but her voice barely came out. She coughed and tried again. “I think the food must have been bad. I’m not feeling right at all.”

 

Jess looked at her sceptically.

 

“So this had nothing to do with how weird Miss Danvers is acting today? Or the way she left your office looking like the cat that got the canary? Did she… did she _do_ something to you, Miss Luthor?”

 

Lena threw up again, and afterwards she began to cry and couldn’t stop. Jess held her until she was calmer, cleaning her up and getting her fresh clothes, and then her sweet assistant called Lena’s driver and saw her home and put her to bed before she would leave her side. Lena could only sleep after several sleeping pills, and her dream was haunted by cold blue eyes and a wide grin that she could swear was just a showing of teeth.

 

***

 

Alex felt faint as she looked up at J’onn. She came to his office, for… why did she come again? And she could have sworn she saw something bad. Something that worried her. Red. That was all she could remember.

 

“How are you feeling?” J’onn asked, hand on her shoulder. He looked worried.

 

“I’m fine, I think?” Alex said. “Just a bit dizzy. Did I… what happened?”

 

“It was my fault,” J’onn said, ruefully. “I was praying, going through a ritual, and I didn’t hear you come in. The ritual had some residual effects and I’m afraid it knocked you out. I apologise, Alex. But you’re fine now.”

 

She frowned. Something about this didn’t seem… right. And she was scared, somehow. Scared of something red.

 

“Are you okay?” J’onn asked.

 

“Fine,” she said, shaking her head. “I just… I can’t remember why I came here.”

 

“We were going to have lunch, and you were going to fill me in on how things are at the DEO. I know Colonel Haley has been forceful about some things,” J’onn said conversationally. He went to his desk and picked up several wrapped sandwiches.

 

“Pastrami, corned beef or veggie special?” he asked, smiling.

 

“Like you have to ask,” Alex said, taking the pastrami and unwrapping it with a smile. She’d just had some sort of Martian mind-whammy. That was all it was. The red thing – it was probably a backwash of J’onn’s fear of fire. That had to be it. She ate her food and talked with J’onn about the DEO, about how they’d dismissed Supergirl, and about how she was starting to think it was a good idea.

 

“She’s a loose cannon, J’onn. I’m worried. She’s obviously pissed that Marsdin was unmasked as an alien. Do you think Supergirl knew? She was pretty chummy with Marsdin, if I remember correctly.”

 

J’onn frowned.

 

“I can only say that Supergirl has always acted with complete integrity. I doubt very much that she would be involved in anything that would hurt this country or its people.”

 

Alex remembered a broken arm, shooting Supergirl, but the details were… blurry. Whatever it was, though, it just solidified what she was feeling. Supergirl was dangerous. And if she had to be the one to stop the Kryptonian when she went too far, then so be it.

 

After she met with J’onn, she got a call from the DEO about a huge purple rage monster attacking people. A monster that turned out to be a human who had taken some weird drug. She took a team and they followed the clues to a town upstate, and almost immediately found a bunch of humans fighting aliens. Alex saw Supergirl pick a human girl up by the throat and lift her off the ground, and she saw red. She aimed her gun at the alien that had obviously been trying to hurt the kid, and Supergirl turned and hit her hand with her heat vision. They yelled at each other for a moment and Supergirl glared at her before taking off. The expression on her face was scary. It reminded Alex of something, and she was hit with an intense feeling of déjà vu. She kept thinking about red and fear and pain. She shook her head and cleaned up the mess in the town before heading back to the DEO. After she finished her paperwork, Colonel Haley came to see her, to congratulate her on a job well done. Alex told her about Supergirl attacking her, and Haley frowned.

 

“I hope she isn’t starting to become a problem,” Haley said. “I think it’s time we started to source some Kryptonite. I’ll have a look at some of the old Cadmus records; see if I can find any note of the recipe for synthetic Kryptonite, or perhaps the location of one of their stashes.”

 

Alex nodded, nostrils flared. If it came to it, she would take Supergirl down, with minimum violence. The alien deserved that, at least, for all the times she’d saved the Earth, and Alex personally. But it was clear, now, that she was dangerous and would likely have to spend the rest of her time on Earth in a Kryptonite cell. And if Supergirl was captured, it might be necessary to capture Superman, as well. He was unlikely to let them imprison his cousin without a protest.

 

She headed home in her DEO SUV, trying to remember what had happened to the DEO’s Kryptonite supply. She got out of the car, heading up in the lift from the parking garage to her floor. Then she remembered Lena. Lena had made Kryptonite before; she could do it again. Alex started to type out a text on her phone, pushing her apartment door open with her shoulder. As soon as she stepped inside, everything went black.

 

***

 

Lena woke late in the afternoon, her sleeping pills wearing off. She instantly remembered the scene with Kara earlier that day, and her stomach lurched. She managed not to throw up this time, but she did pull the comforter around her. Much tighter. Not that it was going to be a shield against… well, anything. But it made her feel better.

 

She forced herself to think about what had happened. Weird things happened to her all the time. It was a constant in her life. Aliens, metahumans, Lex turning the sun red, experiments going wrong.  But things with Kara had always been blessedly _normal._ That was part of what Lena loved about her. She was normal and caring and they talked about ordinary things like boys and work and sexism. But today - that awful person she’d seen wasn’t Kara. Not her Kara. Unless Kara was a consummate actor who had been toying with Lena since day one. But she didn’t believe that. She could believe that kind of about-face of almost anyone else she’d ever met, because they were mostly horrible people. But not Kara. There was something badly wrong. The only situation she’d ever seen that was remotely like this, a totally personality change in a person, was when Supergirl and Superman were poisoned with Red Kryptonite. Her eyes widened as she thought it through. Supergirl had been her friend since she arrived in National City. There had been that one blip with the Kryptonite, but Lena could understand the way Supergirl had behaved, though it had been hurtful. And then there was Kara. Kara had also been her friend since the first day she’d arrived, and she’d always been on Lena’s side. Both of her friends were blonde. They both had incredible blue eyes. And despite Kara’s hunched-over posture and nervous disposition, she was obviously jacked, as was Supergirl.

 

Lena got out of bed quickly and found her tablet. She pulled up a picture of Kara alongside a picture of Supergirl on one of her rescues. She could see that they were the same person, now that the scales had fallen from her eyes, but she ran a facial recognition program on both images just to be certain. They matched. 99%, but that was just because the pictures had been taken at different angles and one side of Supergirl’s face was obscured.

 

Kara was Supergirl.

 

Part of Lena was devastated that her best friend, her world, the woman she was in love with, had lied to her for over two years. But another part of her knew she could have feelings about it later. Right now, Supergirl – Kara – was affected by Red Kryptonite and was a danger to anyone she saw as a threat. Like the President.

 

She immediately called Alex, but Alex’s phone went straight to voicemail. She tried several more times but got the same result. She thought hard, and wondered if there was a way to get word to Superman. Maybe if she called Clark Kent at the Daily… Son of a bitch! He was Superman, wasn’t he? Fucking sneaky Kryptonians!

 

That, however, was another problem for another day. She could call Superman, but who was to say he would come at her call? And if he did, would he be safe from Red Kryptonite poisoning if he got close to Kara?

 

She sighed and thought again. Director J’onzz. He wasn’t at the DEO anymore, but he should know how to stop Kara. And Brainy. He was an alien from the future with a twelfth-level intellect. Between the three of them – and Alex, if they could find her – they could fix this before something truly horrifying happened. Right?

 

She sent Brainy an encrypted text, asking him to see if he could find anything at the DEO that could be used to stop Supergirl and remove RedK from her body. She also asked him to send J’onn to her penthouse. He responded with ‘affirmative’ and 8 minutes later, a large Martian was landing on her balcony.

 

She quickly explained to J’onn what had happened, and he grew more and more concerned as she described Kara’s behaviour and her own process of deduction.

 

“You are right, Miss Luthor. Kara is Supergirl, and it is my fault – and Alex’s – that you don’t know. We have drummed it into Kara’s head that her identity is on a need-to-know basis. I can confirm that she has wanted to tell you almost since she met you. I’m very sorry to have had any part in hurting you.”

 

She shook her head.

 

“That’s not the issue right now. We have to stop Kara from hurting anyone. Or herself. She said that there was someone trying to take away the things she loved. I believe she means the President. Do you think it might be someone else?”

 

J’onn frowned.

 

“Colonel Haley found out that Kara was Supergirl only yesterday. She was going to use that information to blackmail Kara into working for her. She has already shown herself to hate aliens. She has experimented on them. Alex wouldn’t let that stand. She knocked Colonel Haley out, and I changed her memory so that she would forget Kara’s identity. Then… I altered Alex’s memories, and the memories of all those at the DEO who knew who Supergirl was. Alex has no idea that her sister is an alien, and I fear that her opinions on aliens have changed as a result. In any case, Kara has lost her position at the DEO and the support of her sister in one fell swoop. She may blame the President or she may blame Colonel Haley. Or both. It’s impossible to know right now.”

 

Lena stared at him.

 

“You can change memories?” she asked, suddenly terror-stricken.

 

“Yes,” J’onn said gently. “I have only ever done it a handful of times, Miss Luthor, I assure you. A few times to make people forget they’d seen me as an alien, and to take away one man’s knowledge of Kara being Supergirl. A man who almost murdered Alex. And this time I have changed those memories with the consent of all involved. If they had not agreed, I would never have done it. We would have found another way.”

 

Lena looked at him and nodded. There was nothing but sincerity and regret in his eyes. She didn’t believe that this man would hurt people on purpose.

 

“Okay then. I’m waiting for Brainy, but do you by any chance have anything that could stop Kara?” she asked. “I was thinking about contacting Superman, but I figured that he might get infected too if we were really unlucky.”

 

J’onn nodded reluctantly.

 

“I have a green Kryptonite weapon hidden at the DEO. For emergencies like this. I’ll need to go in there and get it.”

 

“Okay,” Lena said. “How long will it take? I think we need to track Kara down as soon as we can.”

 

“I’ll be back as soon as I can. It depends how much hiding I have to do.”

 

Lena nodded.

 

“I’ll be back soon, hopefully with Brainy and the RedK gun. For now, Miss Luthor, you might want to hide somewhere lead-lined. I can drop you somewhere if you have a space like that.”

 

“My personal lab. I lined it with lead after the Daxamites.”

 

“Good. It’s always best to have a last line of defence. It won’t stop Supergirl if she decides to attack you, but it will afford us time to stop her.”

 

Lena shuddered, thinking about Kara’s coldness, about her hurtful words. About the danger that radiated from her.

 

She changed quickly and then let J’onn drop her on her office balcony at L-Corp. She took her private, hidden elevator to her private lab. No-one would know she was here. She didn’t know if that would be enough to save her if Kara decided that she was a threat, but it was better than nothing. She shivered before opening her research on the Harun-El, frowning as she read the latest test results. The formula was working, but only for a short time. The hearts were degrading and they died after a week or so. It was worrying. She still had time to work on it, though, so she busied herself with her research, waiting for Brainy and J’onn to return with something to stop Kara. As she worked she sent up prayers to a god she didn’t believe in.

* * *

 


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara confronts Alex, and things go poorly.

 

* * *

 

Kara had come to the DEO to speak to Alex, to apologise for hitting her with heat vision earlier. It didn’t sit right with her, hurting Alex that way. It was… jarring, to realise that she’d done it at all. But she was so _mad_ at the DEO for attacking the aliens in Parthas. The aliens had been the ones under attack, and the DEO had taken the humans’ side. It was infuriating.

 

She had made her way stealthily through the back corridors of the DEO, intending to catch Alex in her office where they could talk properly. But instead she’d heard a conversation between Alex and Colonel Haley. They were talking about Supergirl, acting like she was a threat. Talking about finding or making green Kryptonite.

 

Alex had turned on her.

 

She snarled and shot out of the DEO through the back corridors once again, then flew to meet Lena Luthor for their almost-daily lunch. She lost her control after a while, and was maybe a little… unpleasant, with Lena. But the woman needed to know that she wasn’t ever going to be good enough for Kara. Kara was a superior being, and Lena was intelligent, sure, but she wasn’t enough for a Kryptonian genius. Kara had always believed that Alex was her true mate, but now Alex had turned on her. Right after J’onn supposedly erased her memories of Kara being Supergirl. It appeared that he had instead planted ideas in Alex’s head, making her believe that Supergirl was a danger. Alex was going to hurt her, and she didn’t even know that she was going to be hurting her own sister. Maybe killing her. Kara bared her teeth. This wouldn’t do. This wouldn’t do at all.

 

She flew to Alex’s apartment, changing when she got there, dropping the super-suit into a corner and dressing in some of Alex’s black clothing. She always felt better when she was surrounded by Alex’s scent. Alex was her chosen mate, after all, even if it was only Kara who knew it. But now… now Alex’s scent just pissed her off, because Alex was a traitor. Kara cast her super-suit a scornful glance – it wasn’t right for her. Not any more. She would have to make something new. Something that showed off her true power. She smiled, her mouth curling up cruelly at the edges. Then she poured herself some of Alex’s favourite scotch, settling in to wait for her treacherous mate. It was time for a reckoning.

 

***

 

Alex groaned as she came to, her head thumping and her eyes struggling to focus on anything. She didn’t remember how she’d been knocked unconscious or where she was, but she could sense someone nearby.

 

“Who’s there?” she said, her words slurring.

 

“Just me, sweet sister.”

 

It was Kara’s voice, but something wasn’t right about it.

 

“Kara?” she said, her tongue feeling far too big for her mouth.

 

“Yes sweetie, it’s me,” Kara said, and this time it was sickly-sweet. Not like Kara at all.

 

Alex forced her eyes to focus – at least as much as they would focus – and she saw Kara sitting in the chair opposite, the one that Maggie used to curl up on when Alex was at work. Kara wasn’t curled up, though. She was sitting bolt-upright, her hand curled around an almost-empty glass of scotch. She was dressed in Alex’s clothes, all in black. It was unlike her.

 

“What happened, Kara?” she asked, grimacing at the pain in her head.

 

“Something pretty bad,” Kara said, in a sing-song voice. “It turns out that the one person I’ve loved since I came here, the one person who made me feel at home… she betrayed me. Made plans to hurt me. Conspired to attack me and capture me. How do you think that makes me feel?”

 

Alex’s consciousness flickered in and out, but she managed to stay awake.

 

“What are you talking about, Kara? Who betrayed you? Why would someone want to capture you?”

 

“I thought you might say that. Poor little Kara Danvers, big ol’ nobody. Why would anyone be interested in her? Why would someone want to attack her? She’s just boring, useless. Not like Director Danvers, the great DEO soldier. The same soldier who killed Supergirl’s aunt. The soldier who attacked Supergirl in a Kryptonite suit and almost killed her. The soldier who is conspiring with Colonel Haley to capture Supergirl and leave her to die in a DEO prison.”

 

Alex gaped at her, the pain in her head getting worse by the second.

 

“What are you talking about, Kara? How do you know this stuff? Where did you hear about it? And why do you care? Supergirl’s just an alien.”

 

“Just an ALIEN?!” Kara roared. “She loved you, Alex. She has _always_ loved you, ever since she landed on Earth. You’re the only reason she ever felt at home on this planet. You’re the only reason we didn’t curl up and die when Kal-El left us at your doorstep. You kept me alive, Alex. I fell in love with you on day one, and you told me you’d always protect me. And now you’re plotting to take me down. You tried to shoot an innocent alien who was defending himself. You’re working with Haley to get Kryptonite so you can take me down and put me in prison, or maybe even kill me. I can’t trust you anymore. I wanted to take you as my bonded, to have a family with you. But you have betrayed me, Alexandra, and I cannot let that stand.”

 

Alex stared at her sister in horror. No, not her sister. _Supergirl._ And to make matters worse, she had distinctly seen red - fiery red - flash across Kara’s face. Kara was Supergirl. How could she not know that? The Red Kryptonite part - along with the ‘bonded’ part - slipped her mind for a moment.

 

“I didn’t know,” she said, bewildered. “I… I didn’t know you were her. I didn’t know you were an alien. I would _never_ hurt you, Kara. I would never have made plans against Supergirl if I knew you were her. She… _you_ scared me when you used your heat vision. You burned me. I was trying to save a human.”

 

“That _human_ took a drug designed to make them strong enough to beat an alien. An alien without powers. An alien who was there for a celebration, a festival. You were defending the human that tried to kill that defenceless alien. You’re a monster,” Kara snarled.

 

Alex winced at that. She hadn’t realised that the humans had been the ones to attack. Not until after, at least. The humans had been attacking the aliens, and she had nearly shot one of the victims. But that didn’t make her a monster. Supergirl had been acting in a worrying way. She was right, wasn’t she? To be worried? But if she’d known that Kara was Supergirl she would never have thought about capturing her and putting her in a prison forever. She _could_ never.

 

“I’m sorry, Kara. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know why I don’t know you’re Supergirl. I would never hurt you. Never. I am so sorry.”

 

Kara stood, sauntering over to her. She placed the scotch glass on the coffee table as she leaned down to push Alex’s head back with her forefinger. The veins on her face glowed red.

 

Alex stared up at her, terrified. Kara – Supergirl – was infected with Red Kryptonite. That was the most pressing matter facing her right now.

 

“I trusted you, Alexandra, and like every other being on this Rao-forsaken planet, you turned on me. You don’t deserve to live. I’m not going to let you. You’ll kill me with your Kryptonite and then you’ll kill my cousin. That’s all you want, all of you. You already killed Astra. Drove a Kryptonite sword through her body, into her heart, and then you lied about it. Let J’onn say he did it. You’re a coward, and I will grind you to dust beneath my feet.”

 

Alex held up a hand, tried to speak, but Kara’s hand closed around her throat.

 

“Enough, human. It’s past time I repaid your kindness. Your mother will be receiving a visit later – I’ll be sure to tell her how you died like a coward before I rip out her tongue.”

 

Alex tried to scream, but Kara crammed fingers into her mouth, shushing her softly. “It’ll be all right, Alexandra. It won’t hurt for long.”

 

Alex choked, and Kara pulled her fingers out of her mouth, licking them before she grabbed Alex’s throat and lifted her off the ground. She squeezed, and Alex felt pressure in her head from the trapped blood alongside the horrible choking sensation. She suddenly couldn’t see anything, but she felt Kara’s fist hit her in her lower chest. She heard her ribs break, splinter into pieces and slicing through organs. Her spleen was probably eviscerated. Kara punched again, still throttling her, and this punch hit the centre of her abdomen as she hung in the air. The impact almost knocked her out, but she remained there, clinging to consciousness, helpless to fight back against the rage of a god.

 

She stayed conscious as Kara dropped her on the floor like she was garbage, then drew her foot back and kicked her. Alex flew back against the wall, bones snapping. Blood poured from her mouth, choking her. She saw Kara’s eyes redden and turn blue-white, and felt a searing, burning sensation in her chest before her body let her fall into blessed oblivion.  

 

***

 

Lena ran into Alex’s apartment behind J’onn and Brainy. What she found was a scene of chaos. Kara was picking up a limp Alex and was about to throw her out of the apartment window. J’onn shot first, hitting Kara with a green Kryptonite energy weapon and knocking her on her ass. Brainy had time then to aim properly, hitting her with the antidote to RedK. Kara was knocked out completely then, limp and lifeless as a red, misty substance dissipated from her body.

 

Alex, however, was bleeding from the mouth and ears, and it was clear that her arms and legs were both broken. Lena couldn’t see anything more than that, but she ran to her friend’s side and checked her pulse. It was slowing, almost non-existent. And her chest… the crest of the House of El was… horribly, painfully burned into it. Kara had used heat vision on her sister.

 

She turned to Brainy and J’onn.

 

“She needs a hospital. But how are we going to explain this? The DEO will find Supergirl and arrest her. Or worse.”

 

“They both need a hospital. Kara will need sunlamps. And Alex… she needs more help than I can imagine. I don’t know if anyone can help her at this juncture,” J’onn said, face terror-stricken.

 

“The Harun-El,” Lena said quickly. “It’s a long story, but it might save Alex. And I have sunlamps in my lab. My personal lab.”

 

“Let’s go,” J’onn said, nodding at Brainy. Brainy lifted Kara, and J’onn lifted Alex gently, telling Lena to jump up on his back. She did so, clinging around his neck, and he took off gently until they were horizontal and Lena could relax a little.

 

They reached her lab in a very short time, Lena feeling horribly sick as they flew down the elevator shaft. She managed not to throw up, however, moving to the lab refrigerator and taking out a vial of the Harun-El.

 

“Get her on the gurney,” she said, and J’onn placed Alex carefully down, trying not to cause any more damage.

 

Blood quickly pooled under Alex’s prone body. Lena cursed, but gently found a vein and injected the Harun-El. The reaction was immediate. Alex’s body began to seize, black veins appearing on her skin. Lena immediately attached Alex to a monitor/scanner of her own design. It catalogued Alex’s rapidly-healing injuries and monitored her heart, pulse and blood pressure among many other things. It showed that Alex’s heart was beating wildly and out of any sort of normal rhythm, and that her blood pressure was through the roof. Lena injected a sedative, something to try to calm the reaction down, and Alex’s body slowly relaxed. Her heart rate fell to just above normal and her blood pressure reduced. At the steady beeping of the heart monitor, all three of them relaxed.

 

“I think… she’s okay, for now,” Lena said.

 

“What did you give her?” Brainy asked.

 

“I’ll explain in a moment, I promise. But let’s get Kara set up under the sunlamps and then we can talk.”

 

J’onn helped her to pull another gurney over and set up monitors and restraints for Kara, just in case they hadn’t managed to get all of the RedK to dissipate from her body. The sunlamps had a red sun setting – something Lena had put in place for the Daxamites, but had never used – and the restraints had Kryptonite in them. She handed J’onn the control for the restraints and sat down, checking Alex’s vitals.

 

“So, Miss Luthor. Please explain the black liquid you injected into Director Danvers,” Brainy asked, in his strange way, leaning forward with his hands together, fingers steepled.  

 

“You remember when Kara’s mother came to Earth?” Lena asked.

 

Both men nodded.

 

“Supergirl asked if I could help her make more of the black rock – the Harun-El - to keep their colony safe. I did so, but I also kept the formula. I tested it on some human hearts that were donated to science. In the first few attempts, the hearts died. Most of them exploded. But as I tweaked the protocol, it began to work. The hearts – they became invincible. They beat on their own, and even incineration couldn’t destroy them. I have been trying for a while to create a way for humans to gain the same powers as aliens. If humans couldn’t be hurt by aliens, they would have no reason to fear them.”

 

A shadow crossed J’onn’s face, and Brainy looked thoughtful.

 

“This Harun-El – has it been tested on humans?”

 

Lena shook her head.

 

“It hasn’t… I was thinking about my next steps. I’ve done some animal trials. The animals are still alive, but… their health is waning. Their strength, their powers – they’re still there, but they’re not thriving. Brainy – I will need your help to find out what the flaw is in the formula. I know that… it isn’t ideal, what’s happened. But we didn’t have time to work something else out. Alex had minutes left at best. I’m sorry that it isn’t enough. Maybe you can succeed where I’ve failed.”

 

She closed her eyes briefly, hearing Kara’s mocking voice ringing in her head. She was no-one’s first choice, and she would never be enough. It was just the simple truth.

 

Someone touched her face and she recoiled.

 

Brainy was looking at her in concern.

 

“We need our little boxes right now, comrade. Together we can surely find a way to make this serum’s life-saving effects permanent. Do not blame yourself. Your work is revolutionary. While I cannot entirely understand the need for humans to have these superpowers, I will help you to make your formula work to keep Director Danvers alive and well. She is very important to me, and to many others including Kara Zor-El. We will make this right, together.”

 

Lena’s eyes filled with tears, and Brainy gripped her shoulder tightly. His eyes were steady on hers, and she could feel his belief.

 

“Thank you, Brainy. You’re a very good man.”

 

He grinned his wide, naïve grin, and she smiled back despite herself.

 

They went to work, and Lena felt some of her guilt and fear melt away as she concentrated fiercely, examining every aspect of the Harun-El and the protocol she’d come up with. A few hours later, one of the machines monitoring Kara and Alex started beeping, and she turned quickly, finding that the alarm was on Kara’s side. Her pulse was increasing along with her blood pressure. She woke up slowly, looking up at Lena with confused eyes. She quickly paled as comprehension dawned in her eyes.

 

“Lena. Rao, did I hurt you? Are you okay?”

 

So. She was Kara, not that… thing, she’d become. Lena busied herself with removing the restraints.

 

“I’m fine, Kara. No damage.”

 

Kara looked away, closing her eyes. Then she sat up, eyes wide with horror.

 

“Alex! Where is she?”

 

J’onn was at her side in a split-second.

 

“Alex is alive. She was badly hurt, but Lena saved her. She’s resting. We expect her to wake soon.”

 

Kara started sobbing. J’onn took her in his arms, holding her tightly, and Lena turned away, going to check Alex’s vitals before returning to her workstation. She tried to ignore the weeping behind her. J’onn talked to Kara quietly, comforting her, and Lena and Brainy worked in silence aside from the odd word or two about their findings.

 

When Alex finally woke, Kara was asleep, her body needing to heal from the Red Kryptonite infection and the hit of green Kryptonite that had knocked her out. Lena looked at her, jaw tight, before going to Alex’s side.

 

Alex opened her eyes slowly, blinking.

 

“Lena? What are you doing here?”

 

Lena smiled at her.

 

“You were badly injured. I had to bring you here. This is my lab, underneath L-Corp.”

 

Alex’s eyes narrowed in confusion.

 

“What happened?”

 

J’onn moved to Lena’s side, taking Alex’s hand.

 

“Kara was infected with Red Kryptonite. She…”

 

“ _Kara_ was infected with Red Kryptonite? But that only affects Kryptonians! Kara’s as human as Lena or me,” Alex protested.

 

“I had to take away some of your memories, Alex,” J’onn said, in his comforting rumble. “We had to stop Colonel Haley from finding out that Supergirl is Kara Danvers, your sister. You agreed to your memories being altered. But when Kara was hit by the RedK, she somehow got the idea that you were trying to hurt her. We had believed she was going to go after the President, but unfortunately we had the wrong idea. We got to you just in time. She was about to throw you from the window of your apartment. You were badly beaten. Miss Luthor told us to bring you here, and she gave you a healing serum.”

 

Alex’s eyes were wide, her lips trembling as tears welled up.

 

“Is Kara… she’s Supergirl? How can she be…”

 

She trailed off, tears pouring out and down the sides of her face.

 

“Is she okay? You didn’t hurt her, did you?”

 

“She’s okay,” Lena said. “J’onn and Brainy took her down, gave her the cure you devised from when Max Lord infected her with RedK. She’s sleeping off the poisoning.”

 

Alex closed her eyes.

 

“Something else is wrong, isn’t it?” she asked, voice cracking.

 

Lena sighed.

 

“You’re too smart for your own good, Director.”

 

Alex just raised an eyebrow.

 

“Fine,” Lena said. “I healed you with… a formula based on the Harun-El.”

 

“The rock from Argo? The one that helped separate Sam and Reign?”

 

Lena nodded. She expected Alex’s face to darken, to see mistrust and anger. But she saw nothing of the sort.

 

“So how did that save my life? I... she really beat me that badly?”

 

Her voice was small and terrified. Lena purposely ignored the latter question.

 

“I’ve been working on it for a while, since Sam. I could tell it had power of some sort – obviously it had to have power; it was powering Argo City. But it wasn’t the sort of power I’d imagined. It powered a dead heart. It made it beat, and it made it invincible. I tried to incinerate the heart, and it just shrugged it off. Eve and I, we kept working on it, and the formula… it got better. I started some animal trials, and while the results were incredible at first, the test subjects… their health has been waning. They’re all still alive as of this morning but they’re not thriving. They all still have their…”

 

Lena trailed off, realising she had to tell Alex that she’d given her superpowers.

 

“They still have their what?” Alex asked, eyes wide. Tears were still running down the sides of her face, and Lena looked at her, feeling torn. She could lie. Make something up about the test subjects still having their faculties rather than powers. But this was Alex. Alex deserved to know.

 

“They all developed superpowers,” Lena said gently. “They still have them. They’re just not thriving. Something isn’t quite right with the formula, and I can’t work out what. In the short-term, you’re safe. And super. But in the long-term… I just don’t know.”

 

Alex looked at her, eyes narrowing slightly in that way she had when she was trying to work something out about a person.

 

“You saved my life, Lena. You’re not to blame that the formula doesn’t work long-term.”

 

“If I’d worked harder, if I’d just been smarter…”

 

“Lena. Stop. You might be smarter than Brainy here. Even he didn’t know how to save Supergirl when the atmosphere was full of Kryptonite, even with his 12th level intellect. But even your brain can’t be perfect all the time, and having other people to bounce ideas off… that’s invaluable in our line of work, you know?”

 

Lena nodded. As always, Alex was right. Eve was helpful to a point, but… she needed more. Someone with deep knowledge of multiple disciplines, like Lena herself.

 

“You’re right,” Lena said, closing her eyes. She took a deep breath. “Are you feeling up to helping out?”

 

“Yes,” Alex said, sitting up slowly and looking surprised at the ease of the movement. “I can help. But first, you need to tell me what Kara did to me. Why you had to use the Harun-El in the first place.”

 

Lena grimaced, but nodded. She had been hoping that Alex had forgotten that part. She pulled up the results from her monitoring system, which was sensitive enough to show even the smallest injuries Kara had inflicted on Alex even as they were rapidly healing. Alex looked at it expressionlessly at first, but then horror began to dawn on her face.

 

“She did this. All of this. Because she believed I was… what? Going to imprison Supergirl? The woman who burned me with her heat vision?!”

 

Alex looked furious, but it was clear that she still wasn’t able to process Kara and Supergirl being the same person.

 

“J’onn, can you undo your… mojo, thing?” Lena said, gesturing vaguely. “She’s not going to be able to deal with any of this unless you do.”

 

J’onn frowned, but moved to Alex’s side.

 

“Are you okay with this, Alex? If I remove the blocks I placed in your mind to make you forget that Kara is Supergirl?”

 

Alex frowned, but nodded. J’onn placed a hand on her temple and his eyes turned red. Lena looked away. She was fine with aliens and their powers, most of the time, but altering memories and messing with people’s minds didn’t sit right with her. All she really had that was hers was her mind, and she wasn’t crazy about the idea of someone else being able to just go in and change anything they wanted.

 

After maybe ten minutes, J’onn took his hand away and grasped Alex by both of her shoulders. Just in time, it appeared, because as soon as Alex opened her eyes, she passed out for a moment. She quickly came to, however, and she started to cry immediately.

 

“I did this. I was going to arrest her. I was going to kill her if I thought it was necessary, because she was a loose cannon. I was going to kill my own sister. What the hell is wrong with me?”

 

Lena went to say something, but J’onn was already reassuring Alex, so she decided to leave them to their talk and returned to her workstation after checking Kara’s vitals again. They had a limited amount of time in which to work out what was wrong with the Harun-El and how to fix it. She didn’t have time for emotionally coddling the Danvers sisters. She wiped her own tears away as she worked, but barely noticed.


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara and Alex wake from nightmares to find themselves right back in one. Lena and Kara fix the Harun-El. Things continue to go badly between Kara and Alex. 
> 
> ***Warning*** there is a dream sequence in this chapter that might upset some people. It was really fun to write, so for those of you who know me at all, you will probably realise that that's a *bad* thing. :)

 

 

* * *

Lena looked at her in concern.

 

“You need sleep, Alex. The problem will still be here when you wake. In the meantime, Brainy and I will keep working. Don’t worry. With all of us on this, we’ll crack it.”

 

Alex nodded, too tired to put up any sort of resistance. She sat on the bed, looking over at Kara, her sister, sleeping, and swallowed. Kara was… she was _everything_ to Alex. Even when she tried to deny it back when they were kids in Midvale, Kara had been her world, her everything. Then Maggie came along and blew open the closet Alex had been hiding in. One she’d likely been aware of for much longer than she pretended.

 

She couldn’t remember what Kara had done to her; not exactly. But she remembered how Kara had looked; sad and decisive at once. She remembered Kara holding her against the wall effortlessly. And Kara’s eyes heating up with heat vision. Her hand went to her chest involuntarily, but the skin under her shirt was unbroken, undamaged. The Harun-El had healed her. But there was no denying that Kara meant to kill her, and had gone about it in the most painful of ways. She could have snapped Alex’s neck, killed her before she knew a thing about it. But she chose to strangle her, to burn her, to beat her. There was no escaping that fact. And Alex didn’t know how they would ever get over that.

 

She swallowed again and lay down on the gurney, switching off the overhead lights and turning over. She had slept in much worse places than this; as a soldier of sorts, she took her rest where she could get it. She fell into an uneasy sleep where she saw giant Karas everywhere, throwing her tiny body between them as they laughed, shooting at her with their heat vision, sometimes singeing her, sometimes just missing. They were having a great time and Alex was crying, screaming for them to stop hurting her. Then she was in her apartment with her Kara looking at her like she was an insect she was about to pin into a book, ready to add to a collection of other humans she’d killed in the same way.

 

Alex screamed as Kara’s heat vision burned into her, desperately trying to get away, but there was nowhere to go, nothing with which she could fight against Kara and her god-like powers on Earth. She was ready to give up, give in, lie down and die. But something in her rose up, then, and she screamed, this time in defiance. Fire shot from her eyes, taking Kara by surprise and shooting her across the room, and she concentrated, made the flames hotter, burning Kara and that look from her face.

 

“Alex! You’re safe! Stop!”

 

She heard the voice, but it didn’t make a difference. She was deep in her terror, and nothing could stop her. She felt a pinch in her arm and then there was nothing.

 

***

 

J’onn stood back from Alex’s bedside, his face burned on one side and his expression pure anguish. Lena felt tears run down her own cheeks. She was lucky she’d kept the Kryptonite restraints and a sedative in a Kryptonite-tipped syringe within reach in case Kara was still affected by the RedK.

 

She looked around at the smoking remains of one side of the lab. Thankfully, the majority of their equipment was on the other side, but Alex had cut through a vault door with her heat vision, and it was going to be difficult to get the pieces out of the way without… well. They had several superheroes in the room; it probably wouldn’t really be an issue. But it had been terrifying for a moment, trying to get Alex to calm down, and then, when it was clear that she wasn’t able to, knocking her out. She had Kryptonite shackles on now, turned up enough to make her more energy-intensive powers like heat vision and super-speed inaccessible to her. Lena’s lab would thank her for that decision, were it able to talk.

 

Kara hadn’t roused from her slumber, even with all of the noise and light. She must have been really affected by the RedK or by the cure. Lena’s best friend, the person she was in love with and trusted more than anyone else on this planet or any other. Her best friend who had lied to her for three years. J’onn had tried to excuse it; tried to tell Lena that it was his fault and Alex’s. But if Kara had wanted to tell Lena, she would have done so. She was a force, a hurricane, and not even J’onn and Alex Danvers would be able to stand up to her if she was determined.

 

Lena didn’t know how to feel about all of this. Her first thought was that it was a betrayal, possibly the deepest betrayal she’d ever experienced. The depth of it was… well, it was comparable to how Lex betrayed her, used her naïveté and her love to try to destroy Superman. And if she was comparing Kara to Lex, then… that wasn’t good.

 

She couldn’t bring herself to truly let herself feel that kind of betrayal where Kara was concerned, because Kara hadn’t told her why she’d kept her identity a secret. She could… she _would_ wait until she and Kara had time to talk about this huge lie between them. She owed Kara that much.

 

She turned away from her best friend and went back to work. Emotions could come later, after she fixed the problem with the Harun-El and everyone was safe.

 

***

 

Kara was deep in another nightmare about Earth-X, only in this dream she was floating in the air next to Overgirl, dressed as she had been during her first rampage on RedK. Everyone she’d ever loved on Earth was below her, all penned up like animals, and instead of soldiers in a firing squad there were Kryptonians – Non and his compatriots – standing in front of the mix of humans and aliens and metahumans. At Overgirl’s command, their eyes lit up, and they started to slowly burn each and every prisoner to death. Kara herself was sure to burn her crest, the crest of El, into the chest of each and every one of her victims. Alex. J’onn. Lena. Mon-El. Imra. Brainy. James. Winn. Barry. The list went on and on and she listened to their screams and laughed, high and bright, at the death of everyone who had ever thought to contradict her, to say a harsh word against her. She licked the tears from Cat Grant’s face while she cried for Kara to spare Carter, then she burned the boy alive as Cat screamed. She left Cat alive until she was done killing everyone else, then she entertained herself as the woman begged Kara to kill her. Humans were so fragile – kill one of their children in front of them and they collapse. She killed Cat slowly like the others, and laughed as Cat screamed and then, when her chest was caving in on itself, she clutched at Kara, trying to say something. It sounded like forgiveness, and Kara spat on the dead woman for daring to touch her, for daring to imply that her forgiveness was something that mattered.

 

She laughed and laughed, and inside of her another Kara wept for the horror of what she’d done. RedK brought out a Kryptonian’s deepest, most evil desires, and she had killed everyone she had ever loved because they slighted her. She wept as her other self laughed, and prayed that Rao would have mercy on her and take her away, to somewhere where she could hurt no-one else.

 

Her awakening was cruelly quiet. She sat up and looked around. Alex was asleep on the other gurney wearing restraints. Kryptonite restraints. J’onn was kneeling in a corner and appeared to be praying to H’ronmeer. Lena and Brainy were both standing in front of a microscope and a computer, silently scribbling something on a notebook in front of them from time to time.

 

As she looked at the other part of the room, she noticed that the door had been demolished. Cut to pieces, really. Had she done that with her heat vision in the midst of that awful dream?

 

She swung around to sit on the edge of the bed, and the movement attracted Lena’s attention. Her gaze was cool, appraising, and she approached Kara in much the same way as a person would approach a cobra.

 

“I… did I do that, to the door? Did I hurt anyone?” Kara asked, miserably.

 

“No, that wasn’t you,” Lena said shortly, checking her vitals carefully. “It was Alex.”

 

Kara’s eyes widened. She knew that… J’onn had said something about Lena saving Alex with something, a serum, but how did Alex have superpowers?

 

“How?” Kara asked, confused.

 

“The Harun-El,” Lena said flatly, as if waiting for Kara to attack her.

 

“The rock from Argo?” Kara asked. “How did that give her heat vision?”

 

“To put it plainly, I don’t know,” Lena said. She sounded weary and defeated. “I’ve been researching the Harun-El for a while and it gave powers to the animals I’ve experimented on, but I don’t know why. And I don’t know why the efficacy of the substance wanes over time.”

 

Kara’s eyes narrowed at that. There were a lot of questions she wanted to ask, like when had Lena decided to work with a substance that even Kryptonians didn’t understand, but she figured she didn’t have a leg to stand on when it came to keeping secrets. But the most pertinent question was – what did Lena mean about efficacy?

 

“Is she in danger?” Kara asked, looking over at her sleeping sister. That word didn’t feel right, not anymore, but she didn’t know what else to call her. Alex, the love of her life. Alex, the one she’d tried to murder.

 

“She is, I’m afraid,” Lena said with a frown. “Not immediately, but the formula I’ve synthesised from the Harun-El is working, but only up to a point. My animals are not thriving. It’s only a matter of time before they waste to nothing. I don’t understand what I’m missing, and even Brainy can’t work it out. But we have time. Not much, but some.”

 

“Is she… is she okay?” Kara asked, in a whisper.

 

Lena stared at her.

 

“No, Kara. She’s not. Are _you_ okay?”

 

Kara stifled a painful sob.

 

“No, of course not. I would have killed her. Without you, without J’onn and Brainy? She would be dead, and my soul would be wandering the empty halls of death for eternity. It may still, I don’t know. The things I’ve done, the things I’ve thought? Rao, I’m a monster.”

 

She looked down, stared at her feet and bit deeply into her cheek. She was a monster. What she had done? She would never be able to make up for it. Would never be able to forgive herself or to be forgiven.

 

She felt a gentle touch on her chin, and looked up to see Lena looking down at her. Her eyes weren’t warm, not like they usually were. But she was looking at Kara, at least.

 

“You’re not a monster. No more so than any of us are. The things that I would do if I were infected with something like that – god, I dread to think. Everyone who ever hurt me, everyone who betrayed me or lied to me – I wouldn’t just kill them, Kara. I would destroy their lives, systematically, taking away everything they loved, and then I would watch them self-destruct. I know that, because I think about it sometimes in my darkest hours.”

 

Kara winced. She had betrayed Lena; had lied to her, again and again and again. At first it was because she didn’t know Lena, but after a while it had been selfishness of a sort, and later than that it was just… cowardice. She looked up at Lena’s blank expression and closed her eyes for a moment.

 

“I know that now isn’t the time, but when… when this is all resolved, I’d like to try and explain. If you’ll let me. Which you don’t have to, of course.”

 

Lena looked at her impassively, but her heart was thumping. Kara could tell that she wasn’t as unaffected as she appeared.

 

“I will listen. I won’t make any promises other than that.”

 

“That’s more than I deserve,” Kara said. “Thank you.”

 

Lena nodded.

 

“Can I do anything to help?” Kara asked, looking around the room.

 

“Unless you lied to me about your scientific knowledge, too, then…”

 

Kara winced. Lena rolled her eyes.

 

“Actually… I was the youngest ever entrant into the Science Guild on Krypton. What I know… it kind of makes Earth science look like cave drawings.”

 

Lena glared at her for a moment.

 

“Then you had better come and look,” she said, but then there was a sound behind her, and she turned to see what it was. Kara turned her head, too, and just had time to bring up her hands in defence as Alex ran at her at just less than super-speed. Kara’s head slammed into the wall of the lab, creating a great dent and sending chunks of drywall and clouds of dust everywhere.

 

“You tried to kill me? How could you? You burned your crest into my chest! What the fuck did I do to you to make you hate me that much?” Alex was screaming in her face, and Kara let her arms drop, let Alex hold her to the wall. She surrendered.

 

“I love you, Alex. I’m so sorry. The RedK… it brought out so much evil in me. I can’t excuse it. I am so, so sorry.”

 

Alex’s eyes were streaming.

 

“Get out of my sight. You’re not my sister. I never want to see you again.”

 

She dropped Kara and turned on her heel. She moved to the corner where a startled J’onn wrapped her in his arms, and Kara fell on her ass, gaping in shock.

 

Lena moved to her side.

 

“There’s another lab nearby. Let me take you there and you can look at the problem yourself, see what you can come up with,” she murmured.

 

Kara nodded, tears streaming down her face.

 

Lena moved to the ruined door, indicating for Kara to move some of the rubble out of the way, which she did as quietly as possible. Lena then led her to a smaller lab nearby. She opened a laptop in the middle of the desk in the centre of the room, logging in, presumably, and then she turned to look at Kara, arms crossed.

 

“She’s in shock right now. Anyone would be. To add to that, she has superpowers that she can’t yet control. It’s a lot to take in. Your face is the face of the person who assaulted her and almost killed her. It will take time. But… I don’t think that anything in the universe can keep you two apart for long. Do you?”

 

Kara shrugged, numb. She wasn’t sure of anything, not anymore.

 

“Trust me, Kara. If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that you and Alex will always find your way back to her. Because… she’s the one you’re in love with, right?”

 

Kara looked up, startled. And ashamed.

  
“Rao, Lena. I’m so sorry. I’ll never… I can’t ever make up for that. For any of it, really. But I hope that you know that I really do love you. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

 

Lena’s face was still expressionless.

 

“We’ll talk about that, one day. But now, we have a Danvers to save. Not to mention my lab animals.”

 

Kara nodded.

 

“I’ll call you if I find anything.”

 

It was an interminable 24 hours later when Kara realised that the Harun-El was lacking something. A biological element to stabilise its molecular structure and make the powers – and the healing – permanent.

 

She called Lena and asked her to come through to the smaller lab. Lena arrived, dark shadows under her eyes.

 

“Did you find something?”

 

“Yes,” Kara said. “But I’ll need to go to the Fortress to work it out. I think the key is in Kryptonian DNA. My DNA, since I’m the last genetically-engineered Kryptonian. Kal was born the old-fashioned way.”

 

Lena stared at Kara’s work, surprised and impressed.

 

“You and I are going to have some very, very long talks, Kara Danvers, about science and what you know. You owe me.”

 

Kara nodded, looking Lena in the eye.

 

“I do, and I make you my promise that I will give you any and all information that I feel is a help to the human race. My people, as I’ve discovered in the last few years, have made many, many things that are best left buried. I hope you understand.”

 

Lena nodded.

 

“Of course I understand. You’ve seen what my brother has invented. I shudder to think what some of those devices would be used for if not for me finding and destroying them.”

 

Kara smiled at Lena briefly.

 

“You have perhaps the brightest soul I’ve ever come across, Lena Luthor.”

 

Lena blushed.

 

“So, the Fortress,” she said briskly.

 

“Yes. I can go now. This shouldn’t take long, then we can fix the structure of the serum and save Alex. And your lab animals.”

 

Lena nodded, then bit her lip. It was the way she did when she wanted to ask for something, but didn’t know if she should.

 

“Could I… could I come with you? To the Fortress?”

 

“Of course,” Kara said.

 

“Thank you,” Lena said, smiling brightly. “Now. What’s a Fortress?”

 

For the first time since waking from the nightmare that was RedK, Kara laughed. Lena joined in, and they exchanged a fond look before turning to leave.

 

Kara waited outside the other lab, out of sight, as Lena explained what they were doing. There were a few objections, but ultimately Lena came out of the lab carrying a sample of the Harun-El serum.

 

“You’re going to need a heavy coat,” Kara said, quietly.

 

“Let’s go to my penthouse,” Lena said.

 

Kara nodded, and checked for permission before she picked Lena up and shot up through the trapdoor in the ceiling of the elevator, bringing them out into Lena’s office and then out through the balcony. From there they made the short stop at Lena’s penthouse to pick up a winter coat, and then they were on their way to the Fortress. At first, Lena looked a little green, but after a while she was smiling and looking around in awe. She stared at the stars, marvelling at how close they seemed from so high up. She was shivering as they drew closer to the Fortress, so Kara concentrated on using some of her super-energy to give out heat from her body. Lena sighed a few minutes later, thanking her. Things were still strange between them, but they were surprisingly calm, too.

 

Lena rolled her eyes at the huge, ostentatious key that Kal had made, and Kara couldn’t help but chuckle, too. Her cousin loved the crest so much, the reminder of his lost people. But the key was… a little much.

 

She showed Lena into the huge Fortress, and Lena stared around her in wonder.

 

“It’s like an alien world,” she breathed.

 

Kara looked at her, one eyebrow up.

 

“You know what I mean,” Lena said, rolling her eyes again.

 

“I do,” Kara said. “But let’s go talk to my uncle Jor; see if he can help.”

 

Lena frowned in confusion, but Kara just headed to the console that controlled her uncle’s AI.

 

He materialised in front of Kara, and Lena gasped.

 

“Kara Zor-El. And Miss Lena Luthor. What can I help you with today?”

 

Kara returned the AI’s greeting. She briefly explained what they were doing, and placed the vial of Harun-El carefully into the genetic sampler within the crystal console. Her uncle’s AI looked off into the distance, as if he was thinking deeply, and then he raised his hand. A screen appeared, showing a section of DNA.

 

“Using a sample of Kryptonian DNA, we can make the serum stable and it will work as you intend. Would you like to proceed, Kara Zor-El?” he asked. The AI was so unlike her uncle, so dead and empty, that she had to pause for a moment and swallow back old, but still potent, grief.

 

“Yes, uncle,” she said.

 

“Please place your finger in the genetic sampler,” he said tonelessly.

 

She did so, and felt a pinprick followed by a weird sucking sensation in her fingertip. Then it was gone, and she pulled her index finger out, where Lena grabbed it and asked why it was unmarked.

 

“Our healing technology is incredibly advanced,” Kara said, absently.

 

A few seconds later, Jor-El spoke again.

 

“I have isolated the gene sequence which will bond with the Harun-El serum, repairing the problem. Would you like me to synthesise the new serum?”

 

“Yes,” Kara said. She turned to Lena. “How many animals do you need to treat? And what weight are they?”

 

“6. And they’re all close to 50kg,” Lena said.

 

“Uncle, please synthesise seven doses for humanoids of 50kg in weight.”

 

“Eight,” Lena blurted. “Please.”

 

Kara looked at her curiously, taking in her blush.

 

“Eight,” she repeated.

 

A moment later, a separate console made a whirring sound and 8 vials of black liquid rose from the centre.

 

“Thank you, uncle Jor,” Kara said, before shutting down the AI. “Ready to go?” she asked, turning to Lena.

 

“Could I…” Lena bit her lip.

 

“You want to take the serum, don’t you,” Kara said. It wasn’t a question.

 

“Yes,” Lena said. “I’m tired of being hurt. I’m tired of my mother attacking me and having her idiot robot drag me around like a ragdoll. I’m… tired of being _scared,_ Kara.”

 

“Okay,” Kara said. She switched the AI on again. “Uncle Jor, please synthesise a hypospray.”

 

The other console whirred again.

 

“Hang on,” Lena said, looking at Kara with a frown. “You trust me with the same powers as you?”

 

“Yes,” Kara said, eyes steady on Lena. “Don’t you?”

 

“I…” Lena trailed off.

 

“That’s okay,” Kara said. “I have enough faith in you for both of us.”

 

Lena nodded, swallowing. Kara loaded the hypospray with the Harun-El formula and handed it to Lena. Lena handed it back.

 

“Please, could you do it?”

 

Kara nodded.

 

“Here we go. Last chance to stay human!”

 

Lena smiled. Kara pressed the button on the hypospray. Lines of black ran from it, and all of Lena’s visible skin was momentarily covered in them. She gasped, and then she was floating.

 

“Welcome to life as a Kryptonian, Miss Luthor,” Kara said, smiling gently. “Care to race me back to L-Corp?”

 

“That’s not fair,” Lena objected. “I can’t be expected to fly as fast as you at first!”

 

“That doesn’t sound like the Lena I know,” Kara said. She winked and flew outside of the Fortress, waiting for Lena, who made it only a few seconds later. Kara indicated that Lena should lift the key, and she did so, grinning in delight.

 

“Now. Let’s see about that race,” Kara said. She shot off into the air, and she heard Lena yelling ‘hey!’ as she flew above the clouds. It was time to save Alex. And then… she would do what she could about rebuilding her relationship with the woman she loved.


	4. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena gives Alex the cure, Kara apologises, and Alex's response leads Kara to a hasty decision.

* * *

 

Alex stayed in J’onn’s arms for a long time, sobbing like she hadn’t done since her father came back from Cadmus and betrayed them all. Rage filled her, rage and pain like she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt before. Because this was _Kara._ For such a long time Kara had been her cornerstone, the centre of her life, her reason for living. She’d sacrificed so much for Kara, and though she had never truly resented that, she… well. The RedK had brought out something in Kara this time that she didn’t think she could ever get over. There were reasons – good reasons – why Kara had been frightened and angry with Alex. After the mind-wipe, which was still a mind-fuck of massive proportions – Alex had turned into a person she herself didn’t recognise. She’d never thought of herself as being unempathetic, though she had done some things early in her time at the DEO that she wasn’t proud of. But the Alex that didn’t know Kara was Supergirl had been ready to put the alien down or imprison her for life. But, like, gently because of the times she’d saved Alex. As if that made it any better.

 

But the _look_ on Kara’s face when she’d hit her, kicked her, burned her. It was something Alex had never seen on another person. A clear sense of superiority mixed with a little sadness at having to destroy Alex for her sins. A predator toying with its prey. A bored woman doing her last task at work before leaving for the day. It made Alex think of Rhea, the Daxamite Queen. The woman thought of humans – aside from Lena Luthor, for some reason – as ants and workers who were worthy only of becoming slaves. That was how Kara seemed. There was rage in there too, intermittently lashing out, but mostly it was just impassivity. Alex was just something she had to take care of. That was all.

 

She stopped crying after a while, and J’onn prayed to H’ronmeer as she lay against his chest, breathing hard as she tried to calm herself down. His rumbling voice was soothing, and she dozed for a little while.

 

She woke when she heard Lena’s voice. She was talking to Brainy, but Alex heard Kara’s name and she stood, finding herself standing in front of Lena in an instant. Right. She had powers. She kept forgetting.

 

“Hi, Alex. Kara has had a bit of a breakthrough with the Harun-El serum. She’s going to take me to the Fortress to fix it. I think when we come back we’ll be able to fix what’s wrong.”

 

“No,” Alex said flatly. “I won’t stand by and let you go anywhere with her. She’s liable to drop you because you fed her kale one time. She’s a fucking monster.”

 

Lena closed her eyes.

 

“I… I admit, Alex. I’ve been scared too. She scared me, badly. She hurt me deliberately. But she didn’t mean to. We all have this… stuff, this darkness inside us. Whatever the RedK does, it takes away her inhibitions, makes her into some sort of megalomaniac. It’s like taking a Lex pill, I guess,” she said, chuckling a little. “She was drugged, and without her consent. To achieve just this. To fracture us, just when we need to be a team. I know you must be terrified and angry. But she’s still the same Kara who loves you, Alex.”

 

“Don’t you dare laugh,” Alex snarled. “She could have snapped your neck on a whim. She might, still.”

 

“I know you don’t believe that,” Lena said quietly. “Look. I’m going. Your relationship with Kara is your own business. As is mine. And I choose to trust her. She’s Kara, my best friend. The woman I’m in love with, God help me. Even though she lied to me, even after the RedK. She is still herself, and I trust her with my life and with yours. Take your time, Alex, but you’ll come to the same conclusion eventually.”

 

Alex considered restraining Lena, not letting her go, but she just turned her back.

 

“I won’t stop you, but you’re making a mistake.”

 

Lena touched her shoulder and squeezed.

 

“I’ll be back soon. Get some rest, Alex. You’ve been through a lot.”

 

Alex sighed, her head down. She stayed there until she heard the familiar whoosh of Kara’s departure, and she went to sit on the gurney. Brainy joined her.

 

“I can do no more to help, it would appear. Do you need to talk, Director Danvers?” he asked.

 

“No,” Alex said, shaking her head.

 

“Very well. Do you mind if I sit down for a little while? I find myself fatigued from my efforts.”

 

Alex nodded wearily, and Brainy closed his eyes, placing his hand on the gurney next to hers. After a moment he stuck his pinkie out to rest against hers, and she moved her hand over. He rested his hand on top of it in response, and they sat that way in silence for some time. After a while she dozed again, feeling like her strength was abandoning her.  

 

She woke when she heard Lena’s voice. She opened her eyes, finding Brainy still next to her with her hand in his.

 

“We did it,” Lena said, her face flushed. She looked both happier and much less pale than she normally did.

 

“You’re sure?” Brainy asked, eyes narrowed.

 

“Would I be here if I wasn’t sure, Brainy?” Lena asked patiently.

 

He tilted his head for a minute, calculating.

 

“It seems unlikely, given your past behaviour. Might I see the formula for the serum for myself?”

 

“Of course,” Lena said. “After I cure Director Danvers. And see to my lab animals. As long as that’s all right with you, Alex. I know trust is hard to come by these days.”

 

Alex looked at her.

 

“It took a while at the beginning, Lena. But I’ve trusted you for a long time. Let’s do this.”

 

Lena nodded. She took a device from her pocket along with a vial, clicking them together and stepping into Alex’s space. She placed it on Alex’s neck, and she felt heat and pain surge through her. It was gone in an instant, however, leaving her feeling like she could move a mountain.

 

“That… that really worked, huh?” Alex said.

 

“Yes it did,” Lena said, smiling in satisfaction. “Now, I have some animals to treat. Could you… Kara is outside. I promised I’d ask. Would you listen to her for a moment? I’ll stay with you both, for support.”

 

Alex looked at her expressionlessly.

 

“Five minutes, no more.” 

 

Lena nodded.

 

Alex followed Lena outside where Kara was standing in the doorway of what looked like another, smaller lab. Kara had both hands wrapped around her abdomen, and was sort of turned in on herself. Like she was trying to make herself as small as possible. Alex felt a stab of sympathy, but tamped it down ruthlessly. She’d given everything to Kara, all of her life. Had protected her

 

_Except when you were trying to find Kryptonite to put her down_

and Kara had rewarded her by murdering her. She’d only survived because of Lena.

 

_You were going to “take her down gently” yourself because of all the times she saved you. What a saint._

Alex clenched her jaw. She stood about five feet from Kara, sticking out her chin and crossing her arms. Kara looked up at her and then looked away, tightening her grip on her abdomen.

 

“I just want to say that I’m sorry. I know there’s never, ever going to be a way for me to make this up to you. But I love you, Alex, and if… if you decide you never want to see me again, I hope that you’ll remember that. Whatever the RedK did to me… there’s no excuse. I _am_ a monster. If you’ll let me, I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you. But… like I said. Please just remember that I have always loved you. You’ve been the only reason I ever felt at home on this planet, and I love you more than anyone.”

 

Alex just looked at her. She didn’t know what to say. She knew that Kara meant every word. But she wasn’t sure that mattered. Not when the last things Kara had said to her before almost killing her were words of hate. Kara looked up at her once more, then looked away, face crumpling. Alex felt another stab of sympathy but pushed it down again. She didn’t know how she felt, so she turned on her heel and walked back into the lab. She heard Kara’s muffled sobs behind her, and swallowed back her own tears. She didn’t know what her life was going to be like now, without Kara, but she had to make a new start. She had the same powers as a Kryptonian, now, and she had a job to do. She squared her shoulders and went to talk to J’onn and Brainy to debrief and talk about finding the RedK and the person who had deliberately infected Kara, to prevent it happening again. She made a mental note to make some sort of inoculation for Kryptonite, red and green, since she was now vulnerable to it. Keeping Kara safe was just a by-product. That’s what she told herself, anyway.

 

When she went to bed in her empty apartment later that night, after flying for the first time, she kept hearing Colonel Haley’s voice in her head.

 

_I hope she isn’t starting to become a problem. I think it’s time we started to source some Kryptonite._

Alex shuddered at the thought of hurting Kara, about killing Supergirl. She started to cry. In that moment, she wasn’t sure she would ever stop.

 

 

***

 

It had been three weeks since Kara had seen Alex. Her sister – the Director of the DEO – had banned her from the building, ostensibly because of Colonel Haley and the President, but Kara knew that wasn’t it. She knew it was all because of the RedK. She couldn’t very well blame Alex, so she tried to be Supergirl, tried to be helpful to National City, but her heart wasn’t in it.

 

She took a sabbatical from CatCo, something which Lena arranged. If Kara had needed to argue with Snapper, she wouldn’t have been able to leave.

 

She had returned to the Fortress many times, searching through the computer and the artefacts in there, and she was lucky enough to turn up a Sunstone. Somehow Kal-El hadn’t noticed it, or else he would have hidden it from her. Not for any other particular reason than that he really didn’t trust her. She was too alien for him. She took the Sunstone, however, and she found herself a spot inside a huge ice island and made her own Fortress. Only hers was called home. /Zehdh/ in _kryptahniou._

/Zehdh/ was hers, and she set it up in the style of her home on Argo. She missed her mother, but she knew why Alura had to return to Argo. Just as Alura had understood why Kara couldn’t return to Argo with her.

 

She programmed her home carefully, adding a transmat portal (donated from Lena) and a communication device that could reach to Argo and beyond. She didn’t call her mother, however, knowing that Alura would pick up on her heartache immediately. She couldn’t talk about what had happened, not to anyone.

 

She spent her days at /Zehdh/ in prayer and meditation, trying to find a way forward for Kara Danvers and Supergirl both. However, Rao did not answer her prayers. It took her a while to have the idea. She was thinking about the future, about how Brainy and Imra and Mon-El had come back to this time to help with Reign. She wondered why. She wondered what had brought them back to the 21st Century. If Reign had won, what would have happened to the world? Would Kara have died? It seemed likely. Without Brainy’s help and Lena’s – not so much Mon-El and Imra – the former having spent most of his time trying to get in her pants, and the latter being pissed off and jealous – she might well have died. What would the future be like without her?

 

That train of thought led her to another. What if she never came to Earth in the first place? If she had stayed on Argo, Alex would have become a doctor or maybe a bio-engineer like her parents. None of the loss that she had experienced would have ever happened. Right?

 

She started thinking about her other friends. James would have stayed in Metropolis and would probably still be with Lucy. Brainy might still have had to come back in time, but he would still have found Winn and he would have ended up working with Superman. Superman who hadn’t ruined lives like Kara had.

 

Lena would never have had to deal with a Super in National City. She wouldn’t have been betrayed by Kara. She wouldn’t have lost so much. And who knew what ripple effects the lack of Kara would have on the timeline? Maybe Lena and Jack would have cracked Biomax and then married and lived happily ever after.

 

Eliza and Alex wouldn’t have lost Jeremiah. Winn might have found himself a girlfriend or boyfriend instead of wasting his time with her and her Super problems.

 

She didn’t let herself think about the negatives. She knew that there might be some, but she also didn’t want the burden of everything that had happened on her shoulders.

 

Before she could think better of it, she put on her Legion ring. It would let her go back in time and change things. Her transmat wasn’t strong enough to get her all the way to Rao, but she could use it to get partway and then she could fly the rest of the distance using the Legion ring, which supported her in space and made her super even without a yellow sun.

 

She would do this, and things would be better. Things would be better for her friends and family on Earth. And she could live out her life on Argo City, the way she always should have. She would do this and it would make everything okay.


	5. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara undertakes her foolhardy plan, and we begin to see the consequences of her decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***WARNING***
> 
> So, we're now on the second part of this lovely little fluffy story. No angst here at all. I've changed the tags, so please check them before reading. Just to reiterate, however, the second section of this fic will be filled with major character deaths. I do promise, however, that there will be a happy ending to this. Also there are two other trigger warnings. Anyone who has watched Grey's Anatomy will recognise one scene here. There is also a relationship that will be considered by some as incestuous. It's between cousins. If you feel like trying to shame me over that, save your breath. Or, you know, your typing.
> 
> Speech in italics is kryptahniou. 
> 
> Also, this is really sad. I cried writing it. Just so you know. 
> 
> That's all for now. If there's anyone left - have fun. :)

* * *

 

 

Part Two

 

Kara transmatted herself through nothingness until she landed in the emptiness of space, almost halfway to Rao. She turned the Legion ring on her finger, the way she’d seen Brainy do before, and thought hard about her last day on Krypton. She felt a huge rush of blood to her head and then passed out.

 

When she woke, she was floating in the vacuum of space. Everywhere she looked there were a blanket of stars, but none were close. She started flying in the direction she believed Rao lay, from the constellations she could see. After a few course corrections she found herself entering the Rao system, seeing Krypton and Daxam intact for the first time since she was 13 years old. She took a deep breath, the sight hitting her in the chest.

 

/Zehdh/

 

Home. She was home. She gathered herself and flew towards Krypton. She landed near Argo City, taking off her cape and bunching it up between two rocks. Her supersuit could be taken as an eccentric robe. No-one would question someone openly wearing the crest of the House of El.

 

She walked boldly through the marketplace and ignored the enquiring eyes all around her. She turned down the street that led to her family’s apartments, and when she saw it, her heart thumped in her chest. Sure, she’d seen it when she went to Argo, but it wasn’t the same, not when Argo was floating in space, in the middle of nowhere. This was home.

 

She debated how to do this. Judging from the position of Rao, from the small tremors she could already feel, she had an hour, maybe less, before the destruction of Krypton. That meant that she was in her bedroom studying in preparation for her first day at the Science Guild. It would have been in two weeks.

 

She had two choices. Try to convince Alura that sending her away would break her heart, or hide her younger self. She quickly decided on the latter. Her mother was many things, but suspicious was definitely part of her psyche at this point in Krypton’s history. She had been hiding the imminent destruction of their planet for many years; someone claiming to be her daughter from the future would not have a warm reception.

 

She used her super-speed to remain invisible and flew in the open window of her bedroom. She stopped to look at her childhood self, her innocent self, and smiled.

 

As if sensing Kara’s eyes on her, her younger self turned and looked at her, head tilted in curiosity.

 

_“Hello. Might I ask your name, cousin?” young Kara asked._

Kara was taken aback at hearing her language for the first time in many years. Her mother’s AI and her uncle Jor’s usually spoke in English, though she had programmed them to speak in _kryptahniuo._ But when they did, they sounded like automatons, and that was worse than not hearing it at all. Hearing the words chiming in her ears once again almost brought her to tears.

 

 _“I am a distant cousin from Kryptonopolis,”_ she said, bowing slightly at the waist, a fitting greeting for a young scion of the House of El.

 

 _“What is your name, cousin?”_ her younger self said.

 

 _“Astra,”_ Kara said, unthinking.

 

Young Kara brightened.

 

“ _That’s the same name as my aunt!”_ she exclaimed.

 

 _“I know,”_ Kara said, smiling. _“I was named after her. It is a great honour to share the name of such a great warrior.”_

 

 _“I haven’t seen her in a while,”_ young Kara said sadly.

 

 _“I think you’ll meet again,”_ Kara said. _“If Rao wills it.”_

Her younger self bowed her head for a moment.

 

 _“Kara,”_ she said, kneeling in front of the child, _“I need you to do something for me. Your mom and dad are going to come for you soon. Do you know about time travel?”_

“Yes,” young Kara said solemnly.

 

_“Well, the thing is, I am a time traveller. That’s why you don’t recognise me. You know that there aren’t any other branches of the House of El other than those sired by Jor-El and Zor-El.”_

 

Young Kara nodded again, her eyes narrowing slightly.

 

_“The thing is, Kara, Krypton is about to be destroyed. The Council have been hiding it. Our people have been overmining the core of the planet, and Krypton has had enough. In less than an hour, it will begin. Krypton will be destroyed; torn apart from within. Your mother and father are planning to send you and Kal-El away to another planet 27 light years from here. It’s called Earth.”_

 

“ _Are they coming with me_?” young Kara asked, her face screwing up in distress.

 

_“No, darling. The pods are old and they only fit one person. One is for your cousin, and the other is for you. What your parents don’t know is that Argo City will survive. Your father has set up a failsafe. It will work, and you can spend your life here with your family. You can stay with your mother and grow up as a Kryptonian, rather than a Kryptonian pretending to be a human. Which would you rather do? Stay or leave?”_

Kara’s eyes were brimming with tears, and so were her younger self’s. The young girl wiped her eyes with a fist before straightening up, her chin lifting.

 

_“I want to stay here. I want to be with my mother and father; I want to rebuild when Krypton is gone. Argo City will need scientists. My father and Jor-El can teach me. But… how do I know you’re telling the truth?” she asked, lower lip trembling._

 

Kara thanked Rao that she had taken her mother’s necklace back from Mon-El after everything that happened with Reign. She pulled it out from the neckline of her suit, showing it to her younger self.

 

Young Kara’s eyes widened.

 

 _“That’s my mom’s necklace!”_ she said in disbelief. She stared at Kara for a moment before realising. _“You’re me, aren’t you.”_

 

Kara nodded.

 

 _“Did you live on Earth?”_ young Kara asked, eyes far too understanding for her age.

 

 _“Yes,”_ Kara said.

 

_“And you wish you hadn’t?”_

 

 _“Yes,”_ Kara said, nodding. _“I do. I wish I’d stayed here with my family and had a real childhood where I didn’t have to hide on a world of aliens.”_

 

 _“Then I will stay here,”_ young Kara said. _“Please tell me how I should do it.”_

 

Kara’s enhanced hearing detected people moving towards the El compound, talking quietly among themselves. It was Zor and Alura.

 

_“Well, we have to hide you. Mother and father are outside. They’re coming to get you.”_

 

 _“Okay,”_ young Kara said, nodding. _“Where should I hide?”_

 

Kara thought about it. There was a hiding place beneath her friend Thara’s home, somewhere they used to hide, giggling together over gossip or boys or girls they liked. Her younger self would fit in there, and neither Alura nor Zor would be able to find her until it was all over. She asked her younger self’s permission and lifted her before shooting off into the sky as fast as she dared. She landed behind Thara’s home and told young Kara to hide in there until it was all over.

 

 _“Thank you,”_ young Kara said.

 

 _“You’re welcome,”_ Kara said. _“May Rao light your way.”_

 

Her younger self returned the words, and Kara took off once again. If she acted quickly, she could save her father’s life, too. He had died initiating the field around Argo. She wondered where he would have set it up, and realised it would be in his private lab, deep under the El compound. It required a DNA match for her to get in, but she had the right DNA at least. She shot in through the same side door and used her super-speed to get past all of the guards unnoticed, stopping outside her father’s lab. She placed her palm on the scanner and the door opened.

 

Her father wasn’t there, so she checked around and found the computer terminal that was linked to an omegahedron. Those were few on Krypton, so she knew it must be what her father was using to save Argo. She turned back to the door and shot her heat vision at it, melting the joins in the metal so that it wouldn’t open with anything less than a blowtorch or a powerful trace rifle, none of which were readily available. She quickly opened up the terminal and brought the shield controls to life. There was obviously a fault with starting the thing or her father wouldn’t have died. But she shouldn’t die; she should be invulnerable with the Legion ring. But then again, wouldn’t she disappear after fixing the shield? She knew the various theories on time travel but Brainy had refused to tell her much about it, though it was clear that time could be changed.

 

She heard shouting upstairs, people calling out for her younger self, and decided to bring the shield online. That way she could repair any problems and save her father’s life too.

 

She tapped in a few commands and the omegahedron started to pulse. All of the connections looked fine as she scanned them with x-ray vision, so she initiated the shield. Immediately there was a huge explosion, and she was knocked back into the far wall by the force of it. Her father had been lucky to survive that explosion the first time round, but he must have, to have been able to get the shield working. Kara immediately returned to the console, finding it sparking. She searched again through the crystals and connections, and found one that was chipped. She pulled it out, scanning it with microvision and finding it to be only a micro-fracture. There was only a microscopic amount of it missing. She used her heat vision at a low level, smoothing the crystal with her thumb as she pressed the crack together. When she looked again, it was whole again, unmarred. She put it back in place and was about to initiate the shield again when there was a thumping at the door.

 

She turned and looked through the door with x-ray vision, finding 3 guards and her father trying to break through it. She knew they wouldn’t be able to, not in time at least, so she smiled and initiated the shield. This time the machinery hummed, and she sat back, thanking Rao for letting her do this, for letting her change history. Now everyone and everything would be okay, would be better. She felt the tremors increase, large explosions sounding in the background, and the whole world shook and turned to rainbow colours that turned to white. And then Kara Zor-El was gone.

 

***

 

Kara Zor-El blinked. For a moment, she had no idea where she was. Then slim hands wrapped around her waist from behind, and she smiled.

 

 _“Thara,”_ she said, grinning.

 

 _“My love,”_ her bondmate said, kissing the side of her neck.

 

 _“I’ve missed you,”_ Kara said, smiling. _“Where have you been?”_

 

She felt like she hadn’t seen Thara in years.

 

_“Don’t be silly, zrhueiao. We woke up together.”_

 

Kara grinned and turned, kissing Thara lingeringly.

 

_“Nevertheless. I still missed you.”_

 

Thara wrinkled her nose.

 

_“Are you ready for the Council meeting? Father is ready to declare war on Selena for her ideas. How would witchcraft be any use in dealing with the rock of Yuda-Kal? Rao knows we are running out, but even your father cannot find a way to reproduce it. Without a new source of it, we are going to have to find a new planet. But it won’t be through Serena’s ridiculous ideas. I swear the woman is mad.”_

 

Kara saw a face in her mind, a beautiful woman with skin as white as snow… What was snow? Her mind blinked and she shook her head. The woman’s eyes were green like Kryptonite, but warm in a way that Kryptonite had never, and would never, be. She had jet-black hair and a sardonic smirk, eyebrow up, always ready to make a quip or cut someone down to size if they crossed her. She was the one who had made the Harun-El. She was the one who’d saved…

 

Kara’s mind drew a blank. She didn’t know what she’d been thinking. She knew no-one with that face. And what was Kryptonite?

 

She wrapped her arms around her bondmate _(wife?)_ and sighed. Was there something wrong with her? Had she been having strange dreams that she didn’t remember? The face of another woman flashed through her mind. She had reddish-coloured hair and a thin face with eyes that moved between amber and a rich brown. Something about her made Kara feel warm and safe. But Kara was already safe. She was on Argo with her family and her bondmate and everything was fine.

 

_For you, perhaps._

The voice in her mind startled her. It was dry, measured, and she knew it somehow. The unusual cadence of the speech. Someone she knew. How could that be? There were a limited number of people in Argo City, and while she couldn’t possibly know them all, she probably had seen most of them. Those who she knew, she knew well. She couldn’t remember anyone with that sort of voice, with that unusual cadence, with the kind of formality she knew the man had.

 

 _“Are you okay, my love?”_ Thara asked.

 

Kara moved back to look her bondmate in the eye.

 

 _“Of course!”_ she said, smiling. _“Just lost in my thoughts.”_

 

Thara shook her head, but she was smiling.

 

_“Just like your father, Stargirl. Always like your father.”_

 

Kara smiled at that, but the name that Thara used for her, Stargirl, didn’t sound right in her bondmate’s voice. Something in her knew that the name should come from another’s lips, and she was once again confounded. Things had been strange, recently. She kept remembering the day that Krypton had exploded. She couldn’t really remember what had happened, not totally, but she was sure that there was someone there who took her to a hiding place so that her parents couldn’t send her with Kal. She knew her cousin would be okay, though; how could he not be, on Earth? He would be a god among them. She only hoped he grew up with good people since none of his real family were there to raise him as a proud Kryptonian man. With that sort of power he could become a tyrant or a saviour.

 

But the day Krypton died… there was someone there. Someone with the crest of El on their chest, bright and bold and not at all understated as the Els always were. It was strange, and it made her mind drift in strange ways. They all knew of Earth on Argo; of course they did. Uncle Jor had been murdered by Zod when he sent Kal away to Earth – Zod had merely been jealous, Kara believed, that his enemy House had sent their last son to Earth while Zod died with Krypton. Earth was a known quantity to their people, now. But she had dreams about it. Dreams of flying like a dragon far above rich green land and bright blue seas. She had never seen a world that colour, however, so the dreams made no sense. She sighed and removed herself reluctantly from Thara’s embrace.

 

_“Now, my love, we should dress for the Council meeting. Mother still wants me to go, to learn, she says. I don’t understand why; I will never take her place or father’s. In the dome we’re all safe and will live long lives.”_

 

_“Who knows why our parents torture us so?” Thara said dramatically. “But you’re wrong. One day you will lead the Council. They need new blood, and the House of Ur should never have been appointed, not after what Jax-Ur did.”_

Kara shrugged. She was a firm believer that people shouldn’t have to pay for the sins of their family. The face of the woman of snow popped into her head again and she frowned. She was growing tired of these odd thoughts.

 

They both dressed in their formal robes, Kara’s highly embellished as the heir to the House of El. Thara wore the El crest discreetly above her left breast, since the Els were much higher up in the hierarchy than the House of Ak-Var.

 

The meeting was long and boring, and the endless debate of what to do about the rock of Yuda-Kal bored her to tears. She thought they should try to launch a ship to Earth, both to attempt to find Kal and to see if there were any scientists on the planet who might be able to help. Her suggestion had been voted down by only a third of the council, but Yar-Ul, the ancient Head of the Council, had overruled the vote. They would not call upon humans, an inferior species. They could fix the problem themselves, he had said in his high whine of a voice. It was as if he believed that he could make it so by willpower alone. It was more than time for new blood on the Council; Kara definitely agreed with Thara on that.

 

She sighed, her head resting on her hand as she leaned on the armrest of the uncomfortable ceremonial chair. She had no idea what was going on in her mind – she was happy and whole, her family alive and well. But she felt that somewhere, someone – several someones – were in danger because of her, and she couldn’t bear it.

 

***

Dr Alex Danvers finished her surgery with her cousin’s husband Derek. He was an incredible surgeon, but a terrible husband. She tried not to glare at him as they scrubbed out, having saved another life. They were a good team, but the entire hospital knew that Derek was fucking a surgical nurse behind his wife’s back. Well, not entirely behind her back, because of course Meredith knew. She was the Chief of General Surgery; she heard everything.

 

Alex went to the Resident’s lounge and changed into her street clothes, sighing in relief. As always, Alex Karev whistled at her tattooed body while she changed, but she just rolled her eyes. He was one of the best people she knew, and his boorish behaviour was just a cover for that huge heart of his.

 

She called Maggie on the way home, her wife purring as she flirted down the line. Maggie had been a cop but re-trained as a firefighter and EMT. Alex had loved the cop look, but she also *really* liked the firefighter vibe. Especially when Maggie brought her uniform home and just wore the bottoms with braces, the lines of them just covering her nipples. Alex shivered, remembering the last time they played out that particular fantasy.

 

When they got home they fell into bed, despite Alex being hungry and tired after an 18-hour surgery. She couldn’t resist Maggie; never could. But she had something to bring up, tonight, and she was nervous.

 

When she lay bathing in the afterglow, head on Maggie’s breast, she sighed.

 

Maggie shuffled so that she could look Alex in the eye.

 

“What’s wrong, baby?” she asked, concern evident in her voice.

 

“I… I need to talk to you. About someone,” Alex said, stammering a little.

 

Maggie smiled slightly, dimples in evidence.

 

“Is this about Mer?” she asked, gently and sweetly.

 

Alex nodded, swallowing.

 

“You want us to try being with her,” Maggie said.

 

“Yes,” Alex said. She was so flushed she felt like her face was on fire.

 

“Okay,” Maggie said, smiling and running her thumb over Alex’s jaw.

 

Alex blinked.

 

“What?”

 

“I said okay,” Maggie said. “I see how you look at each other. I know you’re cousins, and people don’t like that, but you’re only half-cousins and every one of our friends is gonna be fine with it. Except Derek,” she said, grinning.

 

Alex smiled involuntarily, still shocked.

 

“Do you want that? To be with her?”

 

Maggie shrugged.

 

“Mer is hot. She loves you, and she loves me. I love her. And damn, Alex. She’s beautiful. If she’s in, so am I. I love you so much. It’s not exactly a hardship to be with two beautiful women instead of one.”

 

Alex sighed in relief.

 

“God, I love you. I don’t know how I got this lucky,” Alex said, kissing Maggie fervently.

 

“I’m the luckiest woman on this planet, Danvers,” Maggie said, smiling that smile that had always made Alex feel dazed.

 

“Should we call her?” Alex asked, searching Maggie’s eyes for any signs of doubt.

 

“Yeah,” Maggie said. “Let’s do this, baby.”

 

The call to Meredith was brief. Alex invited her over, and her cousin came by almost immediately. She hugged them both and kissed them on the cheeks, and Alex blushed fiercely. It was worth it to see a matching blush on Maggie’s face.

 

“So, what’s going on?” Meredith asked, once she was sitting down with a glass of wine in her hand.

 

“We… kind of wanted to talk to you, about something,” Alex said, nervously biting her lip.

 

Meredith looked at her curiously.

 

“What kind of something? You look really nervous, Alex. You know you can talk to me about anything.”

 

Her face was so kind, her smile so open, that Alex blurted it out all at once.

 

“Wewantyoutobewithus,” she said, and Meredith frowned, trying to decipher her words.

 

Maggie sighed.

 

“Mer, we both love you. And we know you love us. We think that Derek is a dick, but more than that, Alex has strong feelings for you, and I have feelings for you too. I think… _we_ think, that we could be good together. All three of us. What do you think?”

 

Meredith stared at them both. Her mouth was actually hanging open.

 

“Are you serious? Lexie?” she asked, moving to the other couch and sitting next to Alex, tilting her chin up and forcing her to look her in the eye.

 

Alex nodded. Lexie was Meredith’s pet name for her. She really loved the woman. She couldn’t deny it.

 

“Then I say… thank god. Thank god you feel the same way,” Meredith said, tears in her eyes. Then she pulled Alex into her and kissed her. Alex almost swooned. Meredith climbed into her lap, kissing her even more fervently. Alex returned it with equal fervour, and was momentarily angry when Meredith turned away from her, pulling Maggie to her and kissing her.

 

It wasn’t long before they were a huge tangle of limbs in Alex’s ridiculously-oversized bed, and afterwards, as Meredith and Maggie both slept on her chest, she tried to sleep. There was something bothering her, though. A face she didn’t recognise. A blonde woman, tall and strong, with eyes like dark sapphires. Alex knew there was something unusual about her, but she also knew that she, Alex, loved this woman more than life itself. She couldn’t understand it, so she pushed the strange thoughts away and concentrate on the sight and feel of the women wrapped around her, the love that suffused her being. No fleeting thoughts of a woman she didn’t know could distract her from this. She fell asleep not long after, the women she loved holding her close.

 

The next morning, they woke up, making love sweetly and lingeringly, and Maggie headed off to her job as a firefighter while Alex and Meredith headed to work. They shared some kisses in the car before they headed in. It was an amazing start to the day, and Alex was smiling as she headed off to do her rounds.

 

She was called to main reception halfway through her rounds, leaving her interns to finish up, and she stopped in confusion as she saw Meredith, Cristina Yang, Mark Sloan, Arizona Robbins and Derek “the dick” Shepherd. They were all geared up and dressed in their hospital brand jackets.

 

“What’s going on, guys?” she asked, frowning.

 

“We have an organ harvest in Boise,” Meredith said. “Get your gear.”

 

Alex nodded, smiling slightly at Meredith. She went to grab her go-bag and put her jacket on, jogging to meet the others. They headed to a nearby airfield and they were soon in the air in a private jet. Alex called Maggie to tell her that she and Mer would be back late or maybe even the next day.

 

“See you soon, babe,” she said, just before she hung up. “Keep safe in those fires, you hear me?”

 

“Of course,” Maggie said. “I love you babe. Tell Mer too. See you soon.”

 

“I love you too baby. See you as soon as we get home.”

 

Maggie had to go because a call came into the firehouse. Alex decided to return a call to her parents – she hadn’t had time with all the extra surgeries she’d done that week.

 

“Hey Mom, hey Dad,” she said when they picked up. They had picked up an extension each so she could talk to them both, and she told them about the new development with her and Maggie and Meredith.

 

Jeremiah chuckled, and after a moment Eliza joined in.

 

“Why are you guys laughing?” Alex asked, not knowing whether to be upset or to laugh along.

 

“Your dad owes me $100. I predicted it would be before the summer. He said it would be fall.”

 

“You knew?” Alex asked in disbelief.

 

“Of course we did, sweetie. I won’t lie; it took a while for us to come round to the idea. But Meredith is wonderful. Ellis screwed up cheating on Thatcher with Noah, but Meredith rose above it. Noah still goes to see Ellis all the time, did you know that?”

 

Alex did not know that her uncle Noah was still in love with Ellis. The woman had been obsessed with her career and had treated him horribly. But he still loved her, and apparently still visited her in the nursing home that helped her with her Alzheimer’s.

 

“I did not know that,” she said. “But I still can’t believe you guys knew.”

 

“You are a lot of things, Alex Danvers, but a good liar is not one of them. We could see the way you looked at her when you all came to visit. And Maggie, too. And Meredith never tried to hide how she felt about you,” Jeremiah said.

 

Alex swallowed back tears.

 

“Thank you for supporting me,” she said. “You are the best parents a girl could have.”

 

“Sweetie, we have to go. Someone’s at the door. But listen. Be careful, and call us when you get home, okay?” Eliza said.

 

“Of course, Mom. I love you both so much.”

 

“We love you too, sweetheart,” they both said, in unison. Alex smiled as they hung up.

 

Meredith came to sit next to her, seeing the unshed tears in her eyes.

 

“Who was that, honey?” she asked, lifting an arm so that Alex could snuggle into her.

 

“My parents. I told them about us, and they were amazing. I can’t believe it,” Alex said, wonderingly.

 

“They love you, Lexie. How could they not? They want you to be happy. And I really hope I can make you both as happy as you make me, too.”

 

She spoke in a low voice to avoid Derek overhearing, but the way he was tapping on his phone, frowning, they could have made out in front of him and he still wouldn’t look up.

 

“You deserve everything,” Meredith said, kissing her quickly after looking around to make sure no-one was watching.

 

Alex smiled at her and settled back into her arms, and for the rest of the flight she slept like a baby.

 

The organ harvest was done quickly and respectfully, and they were back on the plane in a few hours. They took off as normal, and there were no problems, so Alex slept in Meredith’s arms again, everyone but Derek grinning at them as they realised what was happening. A short time into the flight, however, things started going wrong. The plane was shuddering and moments after Alex woke up with a start, the plane went nose down. The pilot pulled up on the yoke hard, and somehow levelled them out, but it was too late. They landed hard in a forest, the plane breaking up as it went, and Alex passed out as she hit a tree hard. She was mercifully unconscious as the main fuselage of the plane landed on the bottom half of her already-broken body.

 

When she woke, her head was ringing, and all she could hear was distant screaming. She felt around for Maggie, and then Meredith, smiling softly. But… she could only feel dirt. And splintered wood.

 

Suddenly someone was looking at her, way too close. It was Cristina.

 

“Can you hear me? Little Grey?”

 

Alex smiled. Cristina always called her that, even though she clearly knew about the way she and Meredith felt about her.

 

“Yeah,” she said, suddenly choking on liquid. She spat it out, tasting metal. “Where are we?”

 

“We crashed, Lex. We’re somewhere in a forest between Boise and Seattle. Arizona – her leg is fucked up. Mark is hurt. Meredith seems okay but I’m not sure. Derek is fine, fucking cockroach. The pilot isn’t here. I think he’s somewhere else nearby. I’m gonna go with Derek to look for him, see if he’s still alive. We can’t get any cell coverage. But we’re gonna get you out of here, kid. Okay?”

 

Alex tried to roll her eyes, but she fell asleep instead. When she drifted back to consciousness, Meredith was squeezed up next to her, trying to check Alex’s body.

 

“Hey,” Alex said, spitting out more liquid. “Quit feeling me up. Consent is important. You should ask first.”

 

Meredith drew back, trying to smile. Tears were running down her face, however.

 

“Lexie. Honey. The plane crashed. You’re stuck under the fuselage. We’re trying to call for help, but we can’t get cell coverage. Should’ve taken a sat phone.”

 

“You’re beautiful,” Alex said, smiling dreamily. “I love your face.”

 

Meredith stifled a sob.

 

“I love your face too, baby. You hang on for me, okay?”

 

“Anything you want, lover,” Alex said, smiling vaguely. “When’s Maggie getting home?”

 

Meredith swallowed, tears still running down her face. Alex watched them, mesmerised. Meredith was so pretty.

 

“Maggie’s on her way, darling. She’ll be here soon.”

 

“Okay. Tell her I’m not eating any of that vegan stuff. Kara hates it.”

 

Meredith frowned.

 

“Okay, sweetie. I’ll tell her Kara hates it.”

 

Alex smiled and went back to sleep.

 

The third time she woke, she was fully lucid. She was trapped under the fuselage of the plane. There were pools of blood around her. Arizona was still screaming, and she wanted to crawl over to the woman and put her hand over her mouth and nose so she would Just. Stop.

 

Meredith was next to her, holding her hand. Alex looked at her sadly.

 

“Hey,” she said, smiling gently. “How are you doing? Did you get hurt?”

 

“I’m fine, Lexie. It’s you I’m worried about. We need to get you out of here.”

 

Alex smiled grimly.

 

“You know, Mer. I’m not getting out of here. The injuries – I mean, I can’t feel any of it, but with the blood loss, I probably have an hour at most. And if anyone gets here, I’ll die of crush syndrome as soon as they try to get the plane off me. I’m not getting out of here, love.”

 

Meredith started to sob.

 

“I can’t lose you, baby. Not when I just got you. I can’t.”

 

“You can, and you will,” Alex said, trying to make her voice strong. She was feeling faint, weak. She knew it wouldn’t be long. “You and Maggie, you have to be together, be strong for me. Love each other. You’re gonna be great together. And tell Derek to go fuck himself, from me, okay?”

 

Meredith nodded, wiping away tears furiously.

 

“Maybe there’s some way,” she said, trailing off.

 

“Mer, don’t. We are doctors. We know what’s gonna happen here. If I don’t bleed to death, I’ll get a PE or a fat embolus or something and be gone in seconds. I’m just glad I get to be here with you. I’m so sorry I can’t stay with you.”

 

“It’s not your fault, Lexie. It’s not your fault. Maggie and me, we’ll be strong for you. I promise you. And we’ll never forget you.”

 

“Of course you won’t. I’m smart and accomplished and hot. No-one’s forgetting this,” Alex said, trying to gesture at herself with her one good arm.

 

Meredith choked on a half-sob, half-laugh.

 

“You are the hottest, Danvers. I love you.”

 

Alex looked at her, seeing the rest of the doctors behind her, eyes streaming. Even Derek.

 

“It’s okay, baby,” she said, smiling at Meredith sweetly as her heart slowed. “Supergirl will save us.”

 

With that, Alex Danvers fell headfirst into the dark.


	6. Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara continues to dream of people from another world. The dreams are not nightmares; this much she knows. They're much worse. They're reality.

* * *

 

 

Kara woke with a start, a small scream escaping her. She’d had a dream. An awful one. It was about a woman – women – she didn’t know, on a planet that she assumed must have been Earth. It was awful. Heart-wrenching and awful. She couldn’t get the woman out of her mind. She’d seen her before, known her, which didn’t make sense because since Krypton’s death, Argo had been hurtling through space. No-one had ever left the city to go to another planet. It didn’t make sense.

 

She realised that there was silence all around her and she looked up to see that she was still in the Council meeting. Everyone was staring at her. She blushed fiercely, and Thara took her hand comfortingly.

 

_“I’m sorry, everyone. I seem to be unwell. Please excuse me.”_

 

She made her way out of the Council chambers hastily, Thara at her heels. They didn’t speak until they reached their apartments, and it was only then that Kara realised she was weeping.

 

_“What’s wrong, my love? What has happened?”_ Thara asked, looking at her with concern before pulling Kara into her arms. “ _I’ve never seen you like this. You’ve never cried in front of me, not even when your grandparents passed away. What has hurt you so?”_

Kara could only sob. Alex was dead, and it was her fault. She didn’t know why; didn’t truly know who Alex was, but she knew it was her fault.

 

She choked out a lie of a dream about the day Krypton died, of the trauma of losing Kal and Jor-El, and Thara just held her, letting her cry. Her bondmate was so sweet, so understanding. But Thara wasn’t Alex. And even though Kara couldn’t recall why or how she knew this Alex, she knew that what she felt for Thara was nothing compared to her feelings for Alex. She cried into her bondmate’s hair, and felt part of herself wither and die. Alex was dead, and it was her fault. She couldn’t take it back. That night she prayed to Rao to fix it, to bring Alex back, but she felt something in her heart that was like gentle chiding. She had done this, the chiding said. She had chosen this, and Alex was lost because of her.

 

Kara didn’t sleep at all that night.

 

***

 

Lena Luthor sighed. She’d arrived in National City the night before, and was deep in the throes of re-branding LuthorCorp after her brother’s madness and genocide. She hadn’t slept in a month - not for more than three hours at a time, at least.

 

She took another large swallow from her glass of Glenfiddich. Irish whiskey was much better than Scotch, at least in her opinion. However, she was biased towards her home country, even if she’d only spent 4 years there as a child and a few years at boarding school.

 

She sighed again as she looked at the marketing team’s breakdown. Public confidence – and investor confidence – was down, and it would take something really big to start to change their minds.

 

_If I could just get Supergirl’s endorsement_

The thought flashed through her mind and she saw the face of a blonde woman for just a moment. She was pretty, with a small scar above her left eye, and eyes like the deepest sapphire waters of the ocean. Lena shook her head. What an odd thought! Superman was the only alien known to the world. He didn’t have a sister or a wife or whatever. She frowned at herself before discounting her weird thoughts. She was overworked and hadn’t slept for far too long. She glared at the figures on the wall of her new office before draining the rest of her glass and heading to her private apartment/panic room, hidden behind the walls of her office. She slept poorly, and had dreams of a woman flying over the city, a woman who smiled at Lena and cared about her. She didn’t know, but she wept in her sleep, because she knew, through the horrible sense of loss that tore at her insides, that the woman was gone.

 

***

 

The next day, Lena left her work in the solid hands of her Executive Assistant Jess and her new CFO, Sam Arias. When the transfer to National City had gone smoothly with the board, with nothing in NC to discourage them, she had hired Sam, having met her when the woman was working late at a company LuthorCorp was absorbing. The woman was hard-working, focused, and when Lena had seen her teenaged daughter sleeping on the couch in Sam’s office, she was fully convinced of Sam’s commitment. This woman was who she needed in National City with her.

 

She went to the hangar where the Venture was being prepared for its maiden voyage into space. She’d donated the oscillator for the craft, essentially giving the government thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars of development money. The donation had secured her a place on the craft’s first flight.

 

She paid close attention to the safety instructions, strapping herself into her seat securely. She hated flying; she knew it was statistically the safest way to travel, but that didn’t stop her stomach dropping each time she stepped onto a plane. She had just caught sight of the stars when the seat underneath her exploded.

 

Her last thought flashed through her mind, along with the image of the blonde woman.

 

_Supergirl will save us…_

***

 

Kara woke up from her troubled sleep, tears on her face once again. These dreams were disturbing, painful, and she wanted them to stop. She was tempted to go and see her Aunt Lara to get some medication to stop dreams. She rejected that idea, however. She was clearly just having a difficult time. Perhaps it was repressed trauma from the loss of the remainder of their world. Why it would manifest in her dreams in such a deeply strange and incredibly realistic way, she had no idea.

 

She stayed home from work and wrote for hours, detailing all of the memories from her dreams. Alex Danvers. Her mother and father, Eliza and Jeremiah. Meredith Grey, Maggie Sawyer. The other doctors at Seattle Grace hospital. Lena Luthor, the head of some sort of trade company that made scientific and medical discoveries. Lena’s brother who had committed genocide. He had a bald head and hair on his lower face, an odd choice. It was certainly not in fashion here on Krypton.

 

She wrote all of the details down, and when she read it back, it felt strange. It was so detailed and realistic. And it hurt, so much. The deaths of these people who didn’t exist had hurt her on a deep level.

 

She brooded over what she’d written, chewing on her lip so hard that she drew blood. When Thara came home, she found her bondmate asleep in her office, head on top of her computer. Thara looked at the screen and frowned at the strange people and places Kara had written about. She was worried; her wife had always been the perfect Heir to the House of El. Dignified, dispassionate but caring, fair and strong. To see her weeping like a child – something that Kara hadn’t even done as a child – was disturbing to say the least.

 

With the aid of an anti-grav belt, she lifted Kara and took her to their room where she took off her outer clothing and wrapped her in soft blankets. Kara looked exhausted, and her mental state was beginning to worry Thara. She decided to seek out her mother in law the following day and ask her advice. Something was wrong, and she was going to do her best to fix it. She loved Kara far too much to do otherwise.

 

***

 

Susan Vasquez had been at the DEO for two years. After a stint in the National Guard and a position as sniper, she had shot up in the ranks until she was caught ‘liaising’ with a colleague from the JAG Corps. Lucy had been worth it, in the long run, but Susan’s dishonourable discharge still didn’t sit right with her.

 

The DEO had been a real challenge at first. She started as an agent, but again, she shot through the ranks to XO. The trouble was that she had once believed in the DEO and its mission, but things she had seen since then had disabused her of the notion that she was in any way working for the good guys. She’d been looking for a way out for a while, but Hank Henshaw scared her more than anyone she’d ever met before. There was no reasoning with crazy. The things he’d done to that Martian’s body, days after he’d killed it – they would have shocked a serial killer.

 

Hank was sending them out again to find another alien – this time called a Dominator. There was a conference in Geneva that they were using as a cover; pretending to be bio-engineers. The rumour was that one of the scientists had found the alien and was keeping it to do experiments on it. Thankfully, this time Hank wasn’t going with them. His methods were way too harsh for her. Not only that, she wanted to keep her people safe, and he was reckless. She’d lost too many good people already. Her squad depended on her. She had a duty to them and their families not to get them killed under her command. 

 

Before they got on the flight, dressed nerdy with briefcases and other scientific-looking equipment that was in fact filled to the brim with very high-tech weaponry that airport security couldn’t detect, Susan called Lucy. Lucy who was now her wife.

 

“Hey baby,” Lucy said, and Susan could hear her beautiful smile in her voice.

 

“Hey, you,” Susan said. “I’m heading out to Geneva. I left the itinerary on the refrigerator. Make sure to feed Garth, will you?”

 

“I still can’t believe you named your kitten Garth Brooks,” Lucy teased.

 

“Well, not all of us are secret goths,” Susan said.

 

“That was a phase!” Lucy said indignantly. “And I’ve never said a thing about your T-Swift collection.”

 

“Everyone loves some Tay-Tay, even you,” Susan said, laughing.

 

“God, I love you,” Lucy said.

 

“Likewise,” Susan said, her usual answer. Lucy snorted.

 

“I’m gonna have to go, honey. My dad’s calling.”

 

“Okay, honey. Don’t let the asshole bully you into going for Thanksgiving. We’re going to my Moms’, and that’s final. No-one needs to listen to his horseshit in their downtime.”

 

“I promise,” Lucy said.

 

“Okay. I love you, honey. I’ll see you Friday. Give Garth a kiss on the schnozz for me.”

 

“Like hell,” Lucy retorted. “I’m not putting my lips anywhere near that goddam furball. He’ll probably rip my eyes out!”

 

Susan chuckled. She knew Lucy would kiss Garth all over his stupid, lovable face, because she did so every day, morning and evening. She swore her wife loved the cat more than she did.

 

“I love you,” Susan said again. “The flight’s being called. I’ll call you when we land, okay?”

 

“Love you too. See you Friday. Don’t forget to bring me back some Swiss chocolate, or I will _not_ put out, you hear?”

 

“I’ll remember. Bye baby,” Susan said, not wanting to hang up. But the flight was called again and she hung up after hearing Lucy’s final ‘I love you’.

 

When Flight 237 to Geneva started to fall from the sky, Susan stood and held up her fake FBI badge.

 

“It’s all going to be okay, everyone. Supergirl will save us.”

 

The last thing she thought before the plane hit the old LuthorCorp building head-on was that she wished she’d told Lucy she loved her, just one more time.

 

***

 

Kara woke with a start. She found herself in bed, her bondmate wrapped around her. She was once again crying over a woman she didn’t know, and her wife who she also didn’t know. But the trouble was – she did know both women. Susan was fairly short and broad, and could hit a flea off a dog’s nose from a mile away with a sniper rifle. She was stoic and dependable and had a mischievous sense of humour. She always winked at Kara when she entered the DEO.

 

Kara stopped herself. She’d never been to a DEO. She’d never set foot on Earth. She didn’t know these women. Not Lucy Lane, the short, slim woman who had once worked with Kara at… somewhere. She’d been with someone… Kara couldn’t remember. But it was sad, and it set them against each other for a while.

 

She slipped out of bed quietly and went to her office, writing everything she could about the two women. Lucy’s father, Sam Lane, who made Kara’s skin crawl. The other agents on the flight. Mc Gill, Daniels, Jensen, Santiago. They were all friendly, though Mc Gill was a traitor. He had stolen something. Kara couldn’t remember what, but it made her feel nauseated and unwell.

 

She was working frantically, tapping the computer at high speed, and she didn’t notice Thara standing in the doorway, looking at her worriedly. She didn’t notice her bondmate slipping away, and she was completely unaware of Thara’s worried conversation with her mother. When her mother came to see her later that afternoon, she didn’t notice the concern on her face, nor did she notice her mother taking a copy of what she’d been writing for the past several days.

 

She was taken completely by surprise when her mother came back later with her father, Thara, Lara Lor-Van and several bulky guards. They took her to the last remaining hospital on Argo, placing her in a bed with a stasis field and feeding her with medication that was designed to calm the mind and suppress dreams. Kara was relieved when she realised what they were doing for her. She was so tired of these dreams. She was losing her mind. Grief, guilt, pain, desperation – they were all ripping at her heart, and none of it was real.

 

She drifted off into a deep, drugged sleep, and when her family came to see her the next morning, she felt a lot better. She ate breakfast with her mother and father and her bondmate, and a few days later, she was back at work in the Science Guild, working on the problem of the Rock of Yuda-Kal. If they were going to survive, they needed to be able to make more of it. She only wished Lena were here to help.

 

She didn’t notice that thought when it came into her head. Lena was as much a part of her memory as Thara and Alura and everyone else on Argo, and she was finding it increasingly difficult to differentiate between the worlds she was straddling. Some part of her knew that she was going to have to choose, and soon, but she ignored the thought and continued working. No more nightmares, she told herself. She was fine.

 

As she fell asleep, one thought kept echoing in her head.

 

_Supergirl will save us._

***

 

Sam Arias was pissed. Not only had she lost the job of a lifetime, but she’d lost her best friend in the world, and Ruby was inconsolable about her Aunt Lena. Everyone knew that Lex was responsible. But he was still on Stryker’s Island in Cell Block X, and not even the FBI could prove anything different.

 

She’d been having nightmares since Lena’s death. She could see her best friend’s face burning as the Venture went down. She could feel Lena’s fear, her terror. Sam was pissed. She’d never felt vengeful before, but she was feeling it now, and in spades. Lena was dead because of Lex, and Sam wanted to rip his throat out and drink his blood.

 

The odd thought didn’t register with her, nor did she notice the flash of red in her eyes. She growled to herself, and without thinking, she called the mother of one of Ruby’s friends and asked her to pick her up after school and keep her until Sam called back. A family emergency, she said, but her mind and her mouth were in different places. Sam Arias drove to the desert, entered an alien stronghold, and was stuffed into a forest, occasionally seeing flashes of fire, screams, and tasting iron in her mouth. She drove home the next day and woke up in her bed as normal. Ruby was gone to school, as usual, and Sam worked from home quietly for the rest of the day, having taken up accounting work while she searched for a better job.

 

When Ruby was home and they were snuggled on the couch together, she almost fainted when she saw the news about Lex Luthor. An unknown assailant who could fly had destroyed Stryker’s Island in its entirety, killing prisoners and guards alike, and had ripped Lex’s head from his shoulders and drank from his throat as his arteries pumped out great spouts of blood. She licked her lips, remembering the taste of iron and copper in her mouth, but she shook her head. No. She couldn’t do this. She was human. She was normal. She’d been working; there was no way she’d been at Stryker’s Island.

 

The fact that the woman wearing the mask, the attacker, looked just like her but wore a mask… Sam ignored. She wasn’t a murderer. She wouldn’t kill thousands of people in cages, people who couldn’t get out. She was a good person. A _good_ person.

 

She kept telling herself that during the weeks before Superman called at her door. She was still telling herself that as she felt blows rain down on her, even as she was trapped in the forest in her mind. When her mind began to fade, she smiled.

 

Supergirl was going to save them, after all.

 

Sam Arias and Reign died together in a storm of Kryptonian heat vision, Green Lantern constructs and the fists of a goddess.

 

Ruby Arias was taken into foster care. She grew up a rebellious young woman, and got into drugs and started stealing to support her habit. One night she had an argument with a dealer about the price, and not knowing that she was half-Kryptonian, snapped his neck. She spent the rest of her short life in prison.


	7. Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara's dreams continue, and she continues to delve deeper into her other life. Major character death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few people have asked in the comments if there's much more devastation to come. Since this is me we're talking about... well, yeah. Kara's dreaming and the major character deaths will be done with in one more chapter after this one. Maybe two. But the universe is really trying to hammer its point home. Kara might have made a mess with the Red K but without her, Earth is a different, less bright place, missing many amazing people. So stick with me, if you can. :)

 

* * *

 

 

Kara woke with a start. It was happening again. She was increasingly sure that the dreams were her real life. That the people she was dreaming of, the people who were dying, calling out for Supergirl, were real. She still didn’t know who Supergirl was. But she knew this was all because of her. She decided, this time, to play her part in the play that was her life on Argo. Her bondmate, her family – they couldn’t know, this time, that the dreams were back. She couldn’t act any differently, not if she was going to get to the bottom of this; get to the bottom of this and _fix_ it. She had to do something. People were dying and it was her fault.

 

This time she wrote carefully, marking down all of the details. She sketched Ruby Arias’ face, Reign’s mask, the glyph on her chest. Worldkiller. An old story about Yuda-Kal and her witches. A story to frighten children. But not anymore, it seemed. Sam Arias was real. Reign was real, and even with the evil that suffused her being, she had thought of this Supergirl, been sure that she was going to save them all.

 

While Kara was working that day she made a breakthrough. She saw Lena’s face as she did so, and her mind remembered formulae, remembered mice and chimpanzees and _Alex_. She took a chance and combined the rock with a small section of her DNA, the way her memories told her she’d done before. When the results came up, she found that not only did she have a copy of the Harun-El, but she also had a formula that would give her and anyone else who took it stable super-powers. Heat vision. Freeze breath. Flight. Super-strength and speed. Invulnerability. They might only work under a yellow sun; she wasn’t entirely sure. But the formula would definitely give humans invulnerability – maybe other aliens too – in a yellow sun system. If her people could get Argo in a stable orbit around a planet, or even find a home on a planet – the Harun-El formula would pay their entire colony’s way, maybe for centuries.

 

She shook her head and decided to bury the results of her tests, all except the fact that the substance was a copy of the Rock of Yuda-Kal. She tweaked the formula slightly to make the substance solid, and started the fabricators off making as much of the rock as they could. This discovery should take the heat off her for a while and she could continue to investigate her dreams, her thoughts - what had happened in her other life on Earth.

 

***

 

James checked the layouts carefully, marking a few corrections before approving them. He looked out the window, frowning as he thought about Siobhan and the way she always found a way to touch him – his tie, his chest, his arms. It was getting beyond a joke, and he was wondering if he should make a complaint to HR.

 

He folded his arms across his chest, wishing he hadn’t had to come here. He really thought Lucy was the one. He wasn’t homophobic or anything, but seeing her with that agent lady, eyes so full with love that she had clearly never felt for him – it stung. Made him feel like less of a man.

 

He frowned again as he felt a rumbling beneath his feet. First it was subtle, then it wasn’t.

 

_Earthquake._

He ran out into the office and followed his instincts, which told him to get people to safety. He sent all of the staff down the emergency stairs, waiting until everyone was safe, Ms Grant and Siobhan included. The little IT guy tried to help, too, but James sent him with the others. One of the phones rang and he answered it. It was some of the staff from Editorial, and they were trapped two floors up. The stairs were blocked.

 

He decided to try to help. Superman was his best friend, so he pressed the crest underneath his watch face before prying open the elevator doors. He could help people until Clark arrived. He started to climb up the elevator cables, hand over hand, glad he’d been keeping up with his weight training. Then there was an aftershock, and his hands were violently torn from the steel cables of the elevator. He plummeted downwards, and as he reached terminal velocity, he felt only peace in his heart. Sure, he was in danger. But he knew he was safe.

 

_Supergirl will save me._

He was dead before his brain could process that he’d hit the ground.

 

***

 

Cat Grant sighed, her head in her hands. She never showed it outwardly, but she’d cared a great deal for James Olsen. He’d come highly recommended by Clark Kent, and she had trusted him implicitly. He was even a hero, which was frustrating. On one hand it was a wonderful thing, but on the other, it had gotten him killed. He was a pretty boy, and Cat couldn’t say she hadn’t enjoyed that, but he was more than eye candy. While he could be a touch sanctimonious, he had a good heart. He wouldn’t have been Superman’s best friend otherwise. No matter what the world at large thought of the Kryptonian, and aliens in general, he was an unerringly good man, and any friend of his was guaranteed to possess the same integrity.

 

She sighed, standing briskly and shouting for her assistant.

 

“Charmaine!” she yelled, knowing very well that the woman was called Siobhan. But she also knew that the woman was a snake and wanted nothing more than to kick her off her own balcony and take her company from her.

 

Siobhan stepped inside, false smile pasted on her face even as she gritted her teeth about being called the wrong name. Cat raised an eyebrow. No-one would ever be able to beat Kara. She’d been Cat’s longest-running assistant, and she’d never been annoyed by the name thing. Or, if she was, she’d never shown it.

 

Cat’s thoughts were so certain that it took her a second to realise that she didn’t know anyone called Kara, and that she’d never had an assistant last more than three weeks. However, she also could have sworn that she _did_ once have an assistant called Kara. The girl was beautiful, a preppy blonde woman with glasses, a millennial who had done everything that Cat had ever demanded of her. Cat shook her head. She had no idea where that had come from. She probably needed to talk to Dr Schumann and adjust her Lexapro.

 

“Miss Grant, are you all right?” Siobhan asked, with faux-concern in her voice.

 

“Of course I am, Showband,” Cat said. “Now, I need you to go and get me a salad. I don’t care what it is, as long as it has a cheeseburger on top. And get me some of that Bulletproof coffee. I have work to do if I’m going to eulogise our late Art Director in an appropriate manner.”

 

A scowl crossed Siobhan’s face, so fast that Cat almost missed it. However, the smile returned to her face as if it had never been gone.

 

“Of course Miss Grant,” Siobhan said tightly.

 

“And don’t waste time. I want you back at your desk in twenty minutes.”

 

The smiled turned into a grimace, and Siobhan backed out of the office. Cat sighed. Even terrorising assistants wasn’t going to make this Editorial any easier to write.

 

She woke the next morning with a pounding headache, and spent her usual hour with Carter, talking about was going on at school and what he had planned for the weekend he was spending with his father. It was the best part of her day; at least unless she managed to get home early enough to see him in the evening. When she got to the office she realised that one cup of Bulletproof coffee had more calories than a Big Mac, and contained so much caffeine that it was no wonder she’d only slept for thirty minutes or so the night before.

 

She called her staff in for an editorial meeting, and Siobhan dared to bring her a USB stick that hadn’t been checked by the IT hobbit. She gave the girl a blistering glare and sent Kevin the red-headed nightmare to plug the USB into an air-gapped laptop in case of a virus. It turned out that there was no virus, but there were video files showing many of the city’s wealthiest cheating on their wives and husbands. Cat pursed her lips before telling Siobhan to put the USB in the microwave. She had been trying to pull CatCo magazine towards more serious matters, get away from its gossip and empty beauty articles. Siobhan protested, but ultimately gave up and left the meeting to do Cat’s bidding.   


Only, as it turned out a little while later, Siobhan hadn’t destroyed the USB stick. She asked for a moment with Cat, and Cat reluctantly agreed.

 

“I really think that you should rethink your position on the information on this USB stick. This information could be on every channel, but we’ll have the exclusive! We could dominate the headlines! Change the conversation!”

 

Cat held up one hand.

 

“That’ll be enough, Showgirls. I told you that we will not be lowering the tone of my company. We will rise above the petty behaviour of the gossip mongers. And do not use media jargon you don’t understand. If I hear one more thing about this, I will be looking for a new assistant tomorrow. Do I make myself clear?”

 

Siobhan’s glare could have melted steel. Cat almost smiled. The girl wasn’t Supergirl. She shook her head in confusion once again, and Siobhan stalked out of the office, actually going so far as to slam the door. Never mind. Cat would deal with her later. For now she had to call Snapper Carr and have him run her Editorial in CatCo magazine and the Tribune.

 

***

 

It was the following day when Cat received a call from Perry White. She hated that son-of-a-bitch, but she tolerated him since he’d given her a start in the newspaper business.

 

“Cat, I just got an email from someone called… Si-o-ban Smythe? She sent me a video file from some hacker. You know we don’t traffic in this sort of low-brow stuff, Cat. I thought you’d grown out of it.”

 

His voice was patronising and smug as ever.

 

“I didn’t give anyone permission to send that to you, Perry. I ordered Siobhan to destroy that video. Unfortunately, it appears that I now have to fire her. I’d say thank you for the heads up, but we both know you only called to make that comment about me not growing out of gossip. May I remind you that it was you who started me off in gossip?”

 

He chuckled. He probably thought he was being funny. But he was just infuriating today as he had been 25 years ago when she was an intern at the Planet.

 

“See you soon, Kitty Cat,” he said, hanging up before she had a chance to insult him back. It didn’t matter. She would leave a blistering message on his voicemail, and she’d tell Lois so that she would kick his ass, too. She and Lois might have a less-than-pleasant history, but Lois wasn’t about to let Perry’s attitude pass.

 

Cat sighed, squeezing the bridge of her nose. She really didn’t want to have to find yet another assistant, but she had no choice. She needed to make an example of the girl, otherwise other employees might get the idea that she was getting soft, that they could get one over on her.

 

She scowled, steeling herself. Then she yelled at the top of her voice.

 

“SHOSHANA!”

 

***

 

Barry Allen was the fastest man alive. He was sure of it now. He’d run at over Mach 8. He was getting faster, and now with the tachyon device strapped to his chest, he was faster than ever. He didn’t expect the weird portal that opened in front of him and catapulted him into nowhere for long moments before he shot through _another_ portal and ended up climbing the side of a building, catching a tiny woman who was falling from the balcony at the top of the building. He was still travelling so fast that he couldn’t stop immediately, and by the time he had managed to slow himself down he was 20 or 30 miles outside the city he’d emerged in.

 

When he stopped he found that the woman’s sweater was on fire. She was trying to pat the fire out with her hands, but she was just burning herself.

 

He immediately ran around her in a circle fast enough to draw the oxygen away from the woman, letting the fire die.

 

She fainted into his arms, hands badly burned. He lifted her and sped back towards the city, intent on getting her some help. He didn’t recognise the city, but as soon as he got the woman some help, he was going to contact Cisco to tell him how to get home.

 

***

 

Kara had spent the previous evening at a celebration in her honour after finding the solution to their power problems. Thanks to her work on the formula, the Rock of Yuda-Kal was purer, more stable, and those who had been suffering with respiratory problems in Argo City were improving already. Soon enough, the air would be purified and they would have unlimited power and breathable air. And that meant they could grow better crops – the impure air had been affecting their food sources too. With a steady supply of food, air, water and power, they would have much more of a chance of being able to construct and send out ships and see if they could find somewhere to settle.

 

As the hero of Argo City, she had earned herself a little time off from work, and now that she was, to all outside appearances, perfectly recovered from her ‘mental breakdown,’ her mother and Lara and Thara had stopped watching her so closely. She was able to write down the dreams and sketch the people from those dreams in great detail. She’d put together a tenuous timeline, and it seemed clear that one person’s absence from Earth had indirectly caused the deaths of all of the people that she’d been dreaming about.

She had a terrible idea that it was she herself who was the missing person, this Supergirl, the one who should have been there for all of those people to save the day. She didn’t know for sure why people would call her that, but she could guess. She was a Kryptonian, and Kryptonians on Earth had superpowers. With the powers she would have possessed, she could have caught the plane that Alex and the other surgeons died on. She could have caught Flight 237 to Geneva. She could have caught the Venture spacecraft before it crashed – she might not have saved Lena Luthor since the explosion was underneath the woman’s chair, but she could have saved the rest of the people on that ill-fated voyage. She could have saved James from the earthquake; saved any number of people in National City that day. She didn’t know what was happening to Cat Grant, who apparently was once Kara’s boss, but she suspected that the woman was going to die just like everyone else she’d dreamed of. And the lanky, strangely smiley man was also going to die when he shouldn’t have – she could feel it. Without him, many, many others who he should have saved were going to die. And she had an ominous feeling about the woman, Showban Smythe? There was something rotten in her, and Kara was afraid to find out what it was and what she would go on to do. Kara didn’t want to find out, and that meant she didn’t want to go back to sleep. But she knew she had to. There was no other way to get to the bottom of this.

 

She shared a lovely dinner with her family once again, Thara and Zor-El and Alura and Lara. Lara even brought her pet lumir with her. It had been a while since Kara had seen the creature, who was called Terzia, and she fussed over the odd little thing, smiling at its little gurgling noises. Kara smiled and joked and laughed with her family, letting herself enjoy it, because her heart was telling her that she wasn’t going to have this opportunity again.

 

***

 

On the day after Cat fired Siobhan, the diminutive CEO was seething. Her new assistant, Eve, was so smiley and sweet that it made Cat want to crush her spirit. Without a well-trained assistant, Cat had had to leave even earlier that morning, forgoing her morning time with Carter. She’d kissed him and held him close and told him she loved him before she left, but it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. She had missed out with Adam. She didn’t want to miss out with Carter. He deserved a better mother, a better caregiver. He deserved all of her attention.

 

She was starting to believe that it was time for her to move on from CatCo. She had hoped that James Olsen would have eventually taken her place as CEO, allowing her to move on to new things. To being a full-time mother, if she had her chance. Now she had to start searching for a successor all over again.

 

She heard a disturbance outside of her office, and moved towards the glass doors only to fall to her knees as a blast of sheer noise shattered the doors and then burst her eardrums. She watched in horror as Eve’s body flew through the air and hit the side wall of her office with the force of a car going 70mph. The poor girl was dead before she could scream.

 

Cat tried to fight her way to her feet, but she was knocked down once again by a sonic blast. This one she didn’t hear because of her perforated eardrums, but she felt it just the same. She was lifted into the air and hit her desk, and she screamed as her arm snapped on impact.

 

She looked up and saw a woman in the worst face paint Cat had seen since KISS were a thing. She was puzzled at first, but she saw the rage in those eyes and realised who it was. Siobhan. The traitorous little bitch had developed some sort of power. Cat gathered herself to make a retort, wincing at the pain in her arm from each minute movement, but Siobhan opened her mouth again and Cat felt herself being shot out and over the balcony, falling straight down. She screamed as she fell, screamed without hearing it, and prayed that someone would save her so that Carter would have a mother. It appeared that someone was listening, because something caught her and they blurred away faster than Cat could have ever imagined moving. She was unaware of it at first, but her clothing was starting to combust because of the speed. The person carrying her finally stopped, staring at the fire coming from her clothes. She barely noticed his appearance. She was screaming and trying to beat out the fire with her hands, burning herself horribly in the process.

 

The figure in front of her started moving, blurring around her in a circle, and all the air was sucked out of her lungs. She fell forward into the man’s arms and into darkness.

 

***

She woke up in her ruined office. There was a man there, skinny and nervous-looking. He was unfamiliar, and Cat frowned. She sat up, realising that the IT hobbit was there, too, standing over her worriedly.

 

“Miss Grant, are you okay?”

 

At least, that was what she thought he said. She couldn’t hear him.

 

“I’m fine,” she said, not hearing her own words, but feeling the vibration of her vocal cords.

 

The skinny man - who was outlandishly tall - said something to her, but she tapped her ears. Her fingertips were bloody when she took them away. She also belatedly noticed that her hands were dressed with bandages with only the fingertips free. As soon as she noticed that, pain roared to life in part of her hands, while others were strangely numb, as if they weren’t there at all.

 

Skinny man nodded, finally understanding. He said something to Witt, Winifred, whatever the IT hobbit’s name was. Then he disappeared in a blur of scarlet. She realised that the man was the same figure who’d saved her. Her memories were fractured, but she remembered a member of KISS attacking her. No, it was Siobhan. In ridiculous makeup. God only knew what she was supposed to be, but she had screamed like a banshee, killing Eve. And if skinny and speedy hadn’t shown up, Cat would be dead.

 

_Carter_

 

Her son leaped into her thoughts and she called the hobbit to her side.

 

“I can’t hear you, so don’t bother trying,” she said first. “I need you to call my son, tell him that I’ve had a small accident and I can’t hear, but I want to talk to him. Then pass the phone to me. Can you do that?”

 

He said yes, and she rolled her eyes. He grimaced and then nodded. He retrieved her phone from the corner of the room and tried to open it before bringing it over to her. She swiped her fingerprint and handed it to him.

 

She saw him talking intently, then he handed the phone to her.

 

“Carter, darling. I’m sorry that I can’t hear you. I had a bit of an incident and my eardrums are perforated. I’m going to the hospital shortly and then I’ll be home, okay? I love you so much, darling. Be good for Ella.”

 

She handed the phone back to the hobbit, and he talked to her son again for a moment before hanging up.

 

She beckoned for him to come over again.

 

“Now, I need to go to hospital. Can you please call my driver? His name is Terence. He’s number 2 on my speed dial.”

 

The hobbit nodded and made the call, and then offered her a hand to her elbow. She graciously allowed him to touch her, and he escorted her to her private elevator, then to her car. He asked if she wanted him to come along with a few awkward gestures, but she shook her head.

 

“I appreciate the offer, but I’ll be fine,” she said. “If you get a chance to interview the speedy man, please do. The Tribune could do with a good story to increase its readership.”

 

He nodded, and made a few incomprehensible signs, pointing to his ears. She shrugged eventually, not understanding, and he nodded sadly. He reached in and squeezed her shoulder, enunciating carefully.

 

“Get well soon, Miss Grant.”

 

“Thank you,” she said in reply. “You’ve been a great support, Web.”

 

He smiled and nodded, closing the car door gently.

 

They had almost arrived at the hospital when the car was hit by a massive shockwave, and for the second time that day, Cat Grant was knocked out.

 

***

 

She came to, finding herself handcuffed to a bench in National City park. Siobhan was in front of her in her KISS getup, and Cat rolled her eyes. Siobhan sneered at her. She said something, clearly gloating about kidnapping Cat. A second later, though, Siobhan’s eyes widened and she flew through the air as a figure blurred into her. The skinny speedster. Cat sighed in relief.

 

The two had a short fight, Siobhan trying to hit the man with her scream, but he was too fast and she kept missing. He knocked her over again, shooting to Cat’s side and undoing her cuffs with a key. Then he was speeding them away, and Cat mentally sighed in relief. Until Siobhan’s scream hit her and speedy from the back and they hit the floor at high speed. Cat was already in pain; her hands and her head and her ribs and her ears. But that was nothing compared to the pain she was in after she hit the ground. Her bones had shattered so completely that she couldn’t move at all. She was glad that she was deaf, because that meant she couldn’t hear her own screaming. The speedy man was lying next to her, his body broken in the same way as hers. She looked into his vacant eyes, and felt hope, for some reason she couldn’t explain. Something about the sight of him made her remember someone else. Blonde hair, bright blue eyes. A symbol on her chest, like an S.

 

She smiled, her muscles pulling against her splintered jaw. She was going to be fine.

 

Supergirl was going to save her.

 

Her last thought was of Carter, before Siobhan’s final cry broke her body apart like it was a block of concrete, dissolving into dust.

 

There was a crack a few seconds later and Siobhan’s reign of terror was over, ended by a SWAT officer’s bullet to the centre of her forehead.


	8. Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More dreams, more death, and Kara receives some unexpected help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last deathy-death-death chapter. From now on, it'll be slightly less angsty. I mean, as far as RedK and almost killing your foster sister/love of your life is less angsty...

 

* * *

  

Kara woke in the dark, heart pounding and tears running down her face. Cat was dead. Cat was dead too, like everyone else, and it was Kara’s fault. And Carter was an orphan. An orphan who’d just inherited millions or maybe even billions of dollars, and Rao, Kara didn’t even know what those were except that it meant Carter Grant, the young man with curly brown hair and bright blue eyes, the kid who didn’t quite know how to relate to other people any more than Kara herself did, now had more responsibility than any child should ever have. He was such a sweet boy, and his mother loved him so much. Kara didn’t understand what was wrong with Siobhan – the extra from KISS – and why she’d killed Cat and the skinny man. Barry, her mind supplied. The fastest man alive. She didn’t understand, and it was horrifying.

 

She got up quickly, going to take a bath in their huge bathing chamber. The water would hide her tears at least. She was close to the end of this, she could tell. If she could hide her obsession a little bit longer, get to the bottom of what she was seeing, then she would be able to make a decision.

 

She didn’t notice Thara’s eyes following her through the twilight of their bedroom.

 

***

 

Winn stood stiffly in his uncomfortable clothes, one hand on Carter Grant’s shoulder. It had fallen to Winn to tell the kid that his mom was gone. He didn’t know why. But for some reason he and Carter had connected, and the boy had asked Winn to stay with him for the duration of the funeral. Winn had been the last person alive to see Cat and talk to her, and the weight of that was heavy.

 

Carter was composed for the moment, but Winn knew from how he’d felt at the funerals of the people his father had killed that this, the talking, wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was when they started lowering the dead into the ground, never to return. That was when it became real, final, and Winn could only hope that he would be able to help the kid through it. His grandmother was certainly no help. Katherine Grant only sniffed with disdain when he called her to tell her about her daughter’s death, and she was looking down on everyone at the funeral, especially Carter. And Winn, who was clearly neither rich nor influential, and therefore had nothing to offer her.

 

Carter started crying after he’d set a rose on his mother’s coffin, and Winn hugged the boy, telling him it was going to be all right, knowing full well that it wasn’t. Nothing was ever right after you lost a parent. It couldn’t be. Not when you were a fourteen year old boy and no-one else wanted you. Winn had heard Carter’s father and Cat’s mother arguing the night before over who was going to take the boy. It had made him want to scream.

 

Winn took the kid back to his apartment, the penthouse of the highest building in National City. He made a simple dinner for him, then the kid went to shower and change for bed. Winn sighed unhappily. There wasn’t a great deal he could do for Carter, not really. He wanted to save the kid from going through what he himself had been through with foster homes and the whole system, which seemed designed to ruin kids’ lives. He had no idea how to do that, however.

 

Cat’s nanny turned up half an hour later, just as Winn was trying to decide who to call to look after Carter. The woman, Ella, was genuinely heartbroken over Cat’s death, and she and Winn ended up toasting to Cat and sharing stories of the ridiculous things she’d done at work and at home, her insane demands and the things she said. Carter crept in after ten minutes or so and sat with them, sometimes staring into space, sometimes weeping quietly, and sometimes laughing when Ella or Winn remembered one of Cat’s zingers.

 

“She called me Womack once,” Winn said, smiling fondly. “But everyone knew she really called me the IT hobbit or the cardigan hobbit. I kind of liked it, actually.”

 

Carter smiled at him.

 

“Your mom had some crazy days,” Ella said, pulling Carter to her. “Once, when I asked her for a vacation day, she told me that I should go to Japan and work as a geisha since I clearly enjoyed walking all over her. I almost exploded, I was so mad, and then I just started laughing, and she was laughing with me, and we ended up having a glass of wine before I left, with permission for a week of vacation. She told me I worked too hard. I told her it could never be hard work looking after you.”

 

Winn grinned at both of them, and Carter smiled back wanly. A few minutes later, he was sleeping in Ella’s arms, and she was looking at him fondly.

 

“What happens to him now?” Winn asked, frowning. “I heard Cat’s mom and her ex argue last night over who should have custody.”

 

Ella’s eyebrow raised.

 

“You mean they both want him?”

 

“No,” Winn said, frown deepening. “The opposite. I know he has a bunch of money now, but if his relatives won’t take him in, where does that leave him? He’s too young to be emancipated. Will he end up in the system?”

 

It was Ella’s turn to frown.

 

“I don’t know,” she said, and she was clearly holding back her anger. “I would have taken him, if Cat had asked, but I think now it will be up to the lawyers. We can only hope she made provisions for him.”

 

Winn nodded. Cat would have made provisions for Carter, there was no doubt about it.

 

When they read Cat’s will a few weeks later, it was a mystery.

 

She’d asked for a Kara Danvers to take custody of Carter. Winn thought the name was familiar ( _blue eyes, a smile like the sun_ ) but there was no-one of that name registered in National City or in any of the states nearby. There was a record of an Alexandra Danvers who’d been born in Midvale, California, but she was deceased, and her mother was called Eliza, not Kara.

 

Thankfully, Cat had made provisions for if Kara Danvers couldn’t be found. She’d named Ella as Carter’s legal guardian in the event that Kara Danvers wasn’t found or didn’t agree to take Carter. Carter had control over what happened to his mother’s fortune, under advisement from his team of lawyers, and Cat’s mother was actively barred from receiving any of it, as was Paul, Carter’s father.

 

Winn was relieved when Ella and Carter came out of the meeting and shared the details with him. Ella smiled down at Carter fondly, and he smiled back at her tentatively. He was still dazed by the loss of his mother. Winn knew from experience that once it hit the kid, it would be like a sledgehammer.

 

Ella talked to Winn afterwards, asking that he keep in touch with Carter and maybe come and visit him some time.

 

“I can’t do that, Ella,” he said, sadly. She frowned. “Because I’m gonna be over visiting you guys all the time. Carter and I have a date with Call of Duty tomorrow night. Be there or be… somewhere else.”

 

Ella smiled at him, swatting him on the arm to tell him off.

 

Winn hugged Carter and headed back to his apartment, noticing that Ella was looking at him strangely as he turned to go. It occurred to him that she was really very pretty. Then he told himself off for thinking that. Cat had only been gone a few days and he was thinking about moving in on the nanny? He berated himself silently. Carter was the one who needed care, not Winn. And Winn was going to make sure the boy was looked after. Maybe he could make sure the kid got the love and care he needed after the loss of his mother, in the way Winn himself never had. It was time to step up.

 

***

 

It was eight weeks later and Winn, Ella and Carter had settled into something of a routine. Winn came by most evenings after work, and they’d play video games or board games together after Carter finished his homework. Ella had moved into the Penthouse because Carter didn’t want to leave his home, the place filled with memories of Cat. Winn understood that. He hadn’t been given a choice to stay in his home – it was taken from him and he was sent into the system. He didn’t even have a photograph of his mom.

 

They were playing a game of Risk, which had already taken 2 hours, and they weren’t anywhere near finishing the game. But Carter was having a great time, so Ella and Winn indulged him. The television was on in the background – Carter liked it that way, because the television was always on and tuned to the news when Cat was home. Winn didn’t notice at first, but Carter did. He looked at Winn quizzically.

 

“Hey, Winn. Isn’t that your name? Winnslow Schott?”

 

Winn nodded, frowning.

 

“Why do you ask?”

 

“Someone said it on the television,” Carter said, shrugging.

 

A chill went down Winn’s spine. There was no reason for him to be on the news. But there was a Winnslow Schott who _was_ news-worthy, and for all the wrong reasons.

 

He turned to look at the television and saw the face he saw in his nightmares – his father. His father who, the news told him, had now escaped from prison and killed several guards as he did so. His father who was going to go exactly where he went the last time – to kill his old boss for stealing his ideas.

 

Winn didn’t say anything out loud, or at least he wasn’t aware of saying anything, but when he turned away from the screen both Ella and Carter were looking at him in concern.

 

“Are you okay, Winn?” Carter asked.

 

“Fine,” Winn said, pasting on a smile.

 

“You just… you went really white, like you were going to faint or something.”

 

“It’s okay, buddy. It’s just a coincidence – I don’t know that guy at all.”

 

Carter frowned a little, but then they got back into the game and things went back to their new normal pretty fast.

 

***

 

The next morning, Winn found a creepy toy on his desk. It had a pull string, and a voice message played when he pulled the string. The message told him to come find his father at their favourite place.

 

Winn did what his dad asked. He went to the closed arcade where they used to spend so much time, playing games together. It was probably the only good memory he had of his father.

 

When he got there the place was deserted, but his dad showed up soon enough. He smiled, horribly, and Winn glared at him.

 

“It’s so good to see you, son,” he said, and the look on his face was so genuine that it pulled at Winn’s heart.

 

Winn continued to glare at him.

 

“I wish I could say the same,” he said, flatly.

 

“I know you don’t mean that,” his father said. He was still smiling fondly.

 

“Then you don’t know me at all,” Winn said.

 

“You’ll come to feel differently,” Winnslow Senior said confidently. “We’re family, son, and I know we’re going to be partners from now on.”

 

Winn shook his head.

 

“What’s going to happen is that I’m turning you in to the FBI, and you’re going to spend the rest of your life rotting in jail,” Winn said, taking out his phone and dialling the number for the task force hunting his father. He didn’t notice the small wind-up duck waddling towards him until it was too close, stunning him with a flash of electricity. He was paralysed by it, and could only watch as his father came to pick him up and carry him to a car, tying him up and driving them to a familiar warehouse.

 

His father dragged him to the basement of the building, keeping him tied up.

 

“You’re going to work for me, son. You’re going to kill Dunholtz for me.”

 

 Dunholtz was his father’s old boss. Winnslow Schott Senior had decided that Dunholtz was stealing his toy designs, and maybe that was true – Winn was never sure. It didn’t matter worth a damn, though. His father had still killed people over a petty disagreement.

 

“I’m not helping you, Dad. I’m just not. Dunholtz doesn’t deserve to die, whether he stole your designs or not. You’re crazy, just as crazy as you were that day you sent that bomb. Now you’ve gone too far.”

 

“I worried you might say that. So I cooked up a little incentive,” his father said, smiling grimly. “I planted bombs all over this building. If you don’t kill Dunholtz, I’m going to kill everyone in the building. It’s full of Dunholtz employees and their families. Children, grandparents. There are even a few babies in there. So you can be responsible for the death of Dunholtz, the man who ruined our lives, or you can kill a couple of hundred people. It’s up to you.”

 

His father untied him and held out a toy gun towards him.

 

Winn gritted his teeth. He thought for a moment and then took the gun. There was no real choice, here. Not with the lives of hundreds at stake.

 

“Now, I’m setting a timer for the bombs. If you don’t kill him within ten minutes, I’ll blow the building.”

 

“You would do that? Kill your own son?” Winn asked, and despite everything, it hurt. It really, really hurt.

 

“You’re not my son if you don’t do this,” Winnslow Schott Senior said, frowning.

 

Winn swallowed, accepting his fate, and made his way upstairs to a large room filled with people. Dunholtz was on a stage at the front of the room, making a speech about how his company had grown from a tiny, one-roomed toy store to the thriving business they all worked for. It was some sort of anniversary, it appeared.

 

Winn reluctantly made his way to the stage, climbing the stairs and raising the toy gun. Dunholtz looked at him as if he was crazy.

 

“Who are you, and why are you pointing a toy gun at me?” he asked incredulously.

 

“It’s not a toy,” Winn said, shooting up at the ceiling.

 

People started to scream, and Winn watched as they started to evacuate.

 

“Who are you?” Dunholtz asked again. “Why are you doing this?”

 

“I’m Winn Schott Junior,” Winn said, grimacing. “I don’t want to do this, but if I don’t, my dad’s going to blow up the building.”

 

Dunholtz looked terrified. He called out to everyone left in the hall to run. He was a good man, and Winn just… couldn’t do it. He dropped the gun to the floor, but he heard shots ring out at the same time, and felt three hard punches, one to his leg, once to his chest, and one to his stomach. He fell down, blood spilling from his mouth.

 

“Run,” he said, begging Dunholtz. The man wouldn’t do it; he moved to Winn’s side and he tried to stem the bleeding with his jacket.

 

Winn suddenly smiled at him.

 

“It’s gonna be okay,” he said. “Supergirl will save us.”

 

Dunholtz stared at him in confusion. Winn smiled wider. The world went white, and then black. Winn’s last thought was of Carter.

 

***

 

Kara tried not to scream when she woke this time. Winn was dead. She had two memories of the day Winn died. During one, she had saved him and captured his father. But without her there, Winn had died, like so many others she knew she loved. People who depended on her. People she had abandoned so that she could live out a happy life with her family on Argo.

 

She sat up in bed, tears streaming down her face. She loved her life here. She did. She loved Thara, she loved her mother. She loved her father. She loved everything about being on Argo with her people. But she didn’t belong here. She just didn’t. And it was time she did something about it.

 

Once again, Thara’s eyes followed her as she left their bed and went to her office. Once Kara was gone, Thara called Alura Zor-El, who called Lara Lor-Van, and they quickly gathered a team of security guards from the hospital for the second time.

 

Kara didn’t hear them come in, absorbed as she was in her writing. She didn’t feel the pinch in her arm until she started to feel faint. She was already out before her face landed on the desk next to her tablet.

 

***

 

Kara floated in an endless dream, watching people die in a loop of horrible images. She felt her heart tear with each one. A tall, green alien was murdered by a man in dark clothing, a human carrying weapons that Kara somehow remembered. J’onn was the green alien, and she loved him. He was a father figure both to her and to Alex. The man who killed J’onn was Hank Henshaw, she remembered. When he was done, he returned to a military organisation – the DEO - and Kara watched as he directed his people to kill or capture hundreds of aliens of all kinds. She realised that this was the man Susan Vasquez was frightened of. She knew, somehow, that the aliens he had captured were headed for a lab where they would be dissected as humans tried to utilise their powers, to make them into weapons.

 

Her dream followed the DEO agents to a town which was signposted as Parthas. She watched in horror as the agents butchered all of the people in the town, most of whom were aliens. She saw the smile on Hank Henshaw’s face as he gutted a young woman. Nia, she knew. Nia Nal. A Naltorian. Her friend, her ally. She watched as Hank lifted the girl’s body into the air, impaled on a huge knife. She watched as the girl died, blood pouring from her mouth as the light died in her eyes.

 

Another alien, a small, craven blue-skinned alien, died after being beaten to death by a tall, blonde agent who she knew was called Jensen. A blonde Roltikkon had her tongue removed for study, and she died choking on her own blood. A Starhavenite woman and her brother were surrounded and their bodies were subjected to the most horrifying tortures. All of this was done to them as the humans sneered and laughed. It wasn’t necessary, the pain they caused, and that was the part that was truly devastating to Kara. They were hurting people just for kicks. For fun. Causing agony to aliens, just because they could.

 

She watched as some of the aliens were brainwashed into killing other aliens and other humans who supported alien rights. She watched as a woman stood in front of a crowd, talking about alien amnesty. She watched an alien with flaming red hair burn the other woman, the President, to death. She saw people attacking a tall man wearing her family crest, and realised he was Kal-El. Her cousin. She watched him save people from collapsed buildings, from car crashes. She watched him being pelted with stones, people – ordinary people, this time – shooting at him, spitting on him. Calling him a cockroach. She saw him standing over graves – Bruce Wayne, Selina Kyle, Arthur Curry. She saw a tall woman in strange garb – an Amazon, her mind supplied. She was being shot at, and while she appeared to be invulnerable, she was still protecting people from the ricocheting bullets. Kara watched her walk away, climbing into a vehicle, a stealth plane, and going back to a land shrouded with some sort of cloaking technology. The Amazon never returned to the human world.

 

She saw humans venture into the seas of Earth, finding and destroying a civilisation who lived in the depths, the Atlanteans. She saw the Atlanteans being experimented on, their lungs being pulled out. She saw humans who had surgery performed on them, integrating the sea-dwellers’ anatomy until they, too, could live underwater. Unfortunately, the humans used this power to hunt down the last remaining sea-dwellers, destroying them down to the last of the species.

 

She watched as her cousin made his way to a Kryptonian building in an icy land. He prayed to Rao, grieving for the loss of his best friend, and crying over the humans who vilified him even as he tried to help them. He built a small spaceship and launched himself into space, in the direction of Krypton. She saw a portal open in the middle of nowhere, sucking him into a place she knew well. The Phantom Zone. The place where her mother had sent her aunt Astra. She saw his ship crash-land into a featureless plain. She watched as he was surrounded with the worst criminals from Krypton’s history, and she saw his body torn apart as the aliens used his blood on a portal that sent them to Earth, where they wreaked havoc and killed hundreds of thousands of people. She bore witness to his death and the deaths of thousands, and her heart tore to pieces.

 

She had already had enough, had made her decision, and that was when she woke up. She found herself in a hospital bed once again, her body wrapped in a stasis field to keep her immobile. Her mother and Thara were at her bedside.

 

“ _Mother. Thara. Why am I here?_ ” she asked, hurt that they still didn’t trust her, even after she fixed their energy and air problems.

 

“ _You have relapsed_ ,” Alura said quietly. “ _We had hoped you were cured of this delusion, but Thara noticed that you’ve been crying in your sleep once again, and she found you writing about these Earth people again. They’re all in your imagination, darling. While imaginings are not a problem, these have come to dominate your thoughts, interfere in your life. Thara tells me that you have not renewed your bond in weeks._ ”

 

Kara blushed. Those things were not supposed to be spoken of outside of the bonding. It was bordering on rude, even between parent and child.

 

“ _I did not tell her this to upset you, my dearest,_ ” Thara said gently. “ _I am worried. I feel you slipping away from me, from your family. From your life._ ”

 

Kara protested immediately.

 

“ _They’re not my imagination. They’re memories. You don’t understand_ ,” she said, pleading.

 

“ _Then help us, my sweetest girl. Help us to understand, and perhaps we can help!_ ” Alura said, frustrated.

 

“ _It’s all there, in what I’ve been writing. Earth has suffered. All those I love have died, and it’s my fault, for my selfishness. I saved myself and left them all. They are all dead and gone because of me. I have to do something! I have to undo it!”_

 

Her mother and Thara shared a look.

_“I thought we were the people you loved,”_ Alura said, clearly hurt.

_“I do love you, mother. Of course I do! But I left them behind, let them die so that I could be happy here with you. I have to undo it. Will you help me?”_

_“Help you to leave us?”_ Thara asked, and her heartbreak was clear on her face.

 

“ _I will not help you to leave us. I will not encourage these delusions, Kara. Kal-El is not in the Phantom Zone. These others – they do not exist. Apart from the Martian Manhunter, but you might remember him from when your father did some work with him before Krypton’s death. None of this is real outside of your imagination. You will stay here, my sweet girl, until we have cured you of this delusion, of this pain that haunts you. You will be happy again, darling, and soon you and Thara will seed a Genesis Chamber and increase our population. Because of you, we now have the resources to keep ourselves alive and supplied with power. If we are lucky, we will be able to build engines large enough to steer Argo City to a planet where we can settle. This is because of you, my love. We will have a life, a future, and you are one of the keys to that future, love.”_

Kara just looked at her mother, despairing. They would never understand. And while she was in a stasis chamber, she had no way to escape this life which had quickly become a nightmare.

 

She feigned sleep and her mother left her with Thara, who sat by her side and prayed that Rao would heal her. Kara began to pray, herself, hoping that this time, things would be different and she would find a way back to Earth, the Earth were her friends and family lived long and mostly happy lives.

 

This time, Rao answered her prayers.

 

She dozed off for a while, and when she opened her eyes she found a man standing there, a man she knew. Brainy.

 

“Greetings, Kara Zor-El,” he said, bowing slightly from the waist. “You have made an impressive mess of the timeline, have you not? Such death, swathes of it. I have come here hoping that you will make this right. I realise that your home here in Argo City is a tempting place, that it makes you happy. But so many will die for your happiness. It is far from fair, but it is… it is what it is, I believe is the phrase.”

 

Kara sighed in relief.

 

“How do I do this? Can you get me out of here?” she asked, somewhat desperately.

 

“Of course,” he said, concentrating for a moment. He was wearing his human face, for some reason. Kara found his real face much more comforting. As she studied him, the stasis field disappeared and she was able to move.

 

“I can take you back to when you came to Krypton and hid your younger self. You might need to persuade the earlier version of yourself not to interfere this time, but given the pain the alternative has caused, I believe she will agree. Then I will take you to Earth, where you may start to make amends for your actions under Red Kryptonite. It is true that your inhibitions were lowered, that your most horrible thoughts became deed without your consent, but Director Danvers almost died and she is haunted by your actions, your expressions, as you beat her almost to death. It is understandable. And Lena, of course, needs you to be there for her, to prove that you have always been her friend and that your omission of your true identity was a consequence of many different factors, none of which were related to trust. In any case, we should depart, the sooner the better. I calculate that your mother and your bondmate will return in less than five Earth minutes.”

 

Kara nodded determinedly.

 

“Let’s do this,” she said.

 

Brainy looked at her critically.

 

“Perhaps a change of garments is necessary,” he said.

 

“How can I change my clothes when I can’t go home?” she asked.

 

“I have your anti-Kryptonite suit on my ship. One moment,” he said, once again concentrating. He held out his hand and the small, diamond-shaped object that Lena had devised appeared in his hand.

 

He gave her the device and she pressed it to her chest, feeling the strange sensation of the suit moving from the centre of her chest and covering her entire body.

 

“You will also need this,” Brainy said, pulling something from his pocket. A Legion ring. Her Legion ring, given to her by Mon-El what felt like a century ago.

 

“Thank you, Brainy. I was half afraid I’d lost my mind,” she said, grimacing.

 

“That is still to be determined,” he said, frowning. “The actions you have taken and their repercussions could be considered insane.”

 

Kara hung her head. For the sake of her own happiness, she had caused devastation on Earth. She was deeply ashamed. She would do whatever it took to make amends to those she loved, if she was able to stop herself from making the same disastrous mistake.

 

“Shall we go?” she asked, unable to look at her friend.

 

“We shall,” Brainy said. A moment later, she felt the familiar pull of a transmatter device. She found herself on a ship’s command deck and recognised it at once. The Legion’s ship, the one that had brought them from the 31st Century to help Kara and her friends defeat the Worldkillers. Not that they had been a great deal of help in the end, but that didn’t really matter.

 

“Sit and strap yourself in,” Brainy said. He went to the command chair, the floating thing that Kara remembered Lena using at one point. Her old life was coming back to her in huge streams of information, and she was struggling to keep up with it all.

 

The time jump took her by surprise, almost making her throw up, and she took a moment to gather herself before undoing the restraints and standing.

 

“What now?” she asked, looking at Brainy for help.

 

“You do what you can to persuade your former self. You tell her what happened to those she loves on Earth, and hope that she agrees to stop her actions and mend the timeline. If you have to, knock her out and I will transmat her to the ship, into stasis. Then she and I will return to Earth.”

 

Kara’s eyes widened as she realised what Brainy was saying. She was going to cease to exist. Should she succeed in reaching her younger self, in changing her mind, she would disappear, becoming nothing. But it was a price she had to pay. She had ruined so many lives, ruined so much for so many - she deserved the consequences.

 

Brainy watched her for her reaction.

 

“Are you ready?” he asked.

 

She lifted her chin stubbornly.

 

“I’m ready.”

 

He nodded.

 

“Good luck, Kara Zor-El.”

 

Kara swallowed, then nodded. The transmat took her to the exact moment she had landed on the planet, and she found herself standing in front of her younger self.

 

“Who the hell are you?” younger Kara asked.

 

“Who do you think I am?” Kara asked in consternation. “I’m you. Only the you that stayed on Krypton and lived in Argo City. I’m the you that you want to be right now. And I’m here to stop you.”

 

The other Kara’s eyes widened, then narrowed.

 

“You really think you can stop me? We’re equally matched,” she said, looking at the Legion ring on older Kara’s hand.

 

“I don’t want to fight with you. I want you to listen to me,” Kara said. “You’re making a huge mistake. If you do this, almost everyone on Earth that you love will die. Alex – she becomes a surgeon because you aren’t there to change her life. She is in a horrible plane crash. Cat Grant is murdered by Siobhan Smythe. J’onn is killed by Hank Henshaw because Jeremiah never joins the DEO. After that, Hank Henshaw leads the DEO to even more vicious attacks on aliens, and eventually they are almost wiped out, or sent to Cadmus to be dissected and tortured. Lena ends up on the Venture – the reason she didn’t take the flight the first time was because she was trying to persuade board members that Supergirl being in National City wouldn’t be a problem. The Venture explodes and she dies. Kal-El ends up being hunted by the DEO and vilified by the public. He tries to return to Krypton, to try and find some of our people, but he’s pulled into the Phantom Zone and the Phantoms and criminals there tear him to pieces and use his blood to escape to Earth. They kill hundreds of thousands of people and the DEO can’t stop them. President Marsdin is assassinated. Winn is killed by the police when his father kidnaps him. Susan Vasquez dies on Flight 237 to Geneva. James dies in the National City earthquake. Should I go on?” Kara asked, and there were tears spilling down her face.

 

The other Kara, however, had set her jaw.

 

“Why should I believe you? How do I even know that you’re me?” she said belligerently.

 

“Because I know you’re in love with Alex, that you have been since we were teenagers. That you almost murdered her under Red Kryptonite, and that this – changing the timeline – is an attempt to save the people you love by not inflicting yourself on them. But without you, Kara, their lives are changed in a very different way, and for most of them it is not a good change. I don’t know how to get you to believe me, but I beg you. Don’t do this. Don’t kill all of our friends and family.”

 

“I’ve heard enough,” the other Kara said, pugnaciously. “I’m going to stop my younger self from being sent to Earth, and this idiocy can end. Everyone will be fine without me.”

 

Kara shook her head.

 

“No, they won’t.”

 

Younger Kara tried to fly away, but Kara grabbed her cape and pulled her back down. She suddenly remembered the upgrades that Lena had made to this suit, and she punched at her younger self’s chest. A shot of electricity shot through her body, and she passed out. Kara caught her, and she touched her ear to talk to Brainy.

 

“Is it done?” he asked.

 

“It is. You should transmat her now. Thank you, Brainy, for giving us a second chance. Now, take her home.”

 

“You are a brave person, Kara Zor-El. Well done.”

 

“Thank you,” Kara said quietly. She turned off her comms and flew to the Fire Falls, her favourite place on Krypton, and a place she knew didn’t survive the destruction of the planet. She prayed to Rao, thanking him for his help in letting her fix her mistakes. Then the falls exploded, the planet broke apart, and Kara Zor-El faded from existence, her mission completed. Only a whisper of a thought remained.

 

_I love you, Alex_


	9. Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara returns home to try to fix what she broke.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Kara Zor-El woke in a ship she recognised as belonging to the Legion of Superheroes in the 31st Century. At first she couldn’t remember anything at all and almost had a panic attack. Then memories started to flood into her mind. The onslaught of it all made her scream in pain, her head ready to explode. She moved from her seat to standing, fists up, eyes blazing with heat vision. She screamed again, and her heat vision spilled out, ricocheting around the cabin of the ship.

 

A figure stepped from behind her, and a part of the wall suddenly changed, flashing, and the ricocheting beam of heat vision was pulled into it and presumably neutralised. Kara fell to her knees.

 

“Breathe, Kara Zor-El. Breathe slowly. Do not fight this. You are experiencing the memories of two timelines converging. Fighting will only make it harder. Breathe slowly, as you would for Torquasm-Vo. Close your eyes and let the memories come. I will remain here with you. You are not alone.”

 

She recognised the voice, and began slowly to calm herself, breathing along with Brainy, who was holding her hand and humming something gently. The memories were devastating, even at the speed they were pouring into her brain. Even as she tried not to resist the onslaught, she began to sob, and trying to breathe through it became extremely difficult. Brainy asked her if she wanted to be sedated, but she shook her head. She deserved this. What had she been thinking? That she could just disappear from the timeline, without consequence? How could she have forgotten how many people she’d saved in her time as Supergirl? How could she not have realised that many, many of those people would have died had she not been present? She was lucky that Myriad had never happened in the other timeline – she wasn’t sure what had stopped Astra and Non from taking that insane course of action, but at least she hadn’t been responsible for the deaths of all the citizens of National City. Or the world.

 

It took four Earth hours for the memories to slow, and her sobbing eventually slowed and then stilled. With Brainy’s help, she recovered enough that she was able to sit up and eat the huge meal he replicated for them both.

 

“Do you feel better now, Kara Zor-El?” Brainy asked, in his wonderfully unusual cadence.

 

“Not… not really. Calmer, yes. Better? Rao, no. I’m so selfish, Brainy. I let all of my friends die. I left humanity without a protector, and my absence caused nothing but death and misery. All I wanted was to undo what happened while I was under the influence of Red Kryptonite. What happened instead was that I destroyed everything I should have been there to protect. How could I do that?”

 

He took her hand again, making attempts at soothing noises, but he was so formal that she almost found it amusing. Almost.

 

“Your reasons were… yes. Somewhat selfish, though I understand the depth of your guilt after the pain the Red Kryptonite infection caused. However, your failure to consider the consequences of your actions almost caused you and those you loved to be wiped from existence entirely to avoid the deaths of billions.”

 

Kara blanched.

 

“Millions?”

 

“Eventually your actions would have caused the death of millions. In the 31st century, the Legion were able to turn back several invasion attempts from aliens who wished to destroy humans for what they had done to alienkind. Without our existence, you would have been directly responsible for billions of deaths, perhaps the destruction of the entire Milky Way galaxy and its occupants. I was visited by the Monitor, Kara. I had to beg him to allow me to fix the issue with the timeline instead of him taking more extreme actions. You cannot let me down, Kara Zor-El. I have pledged my existence to save you all.”

 

Kara swallowed.

 

“I’m never going to be able to make this right, Brainy. I can only promise you that I will never mess with the timeline again. I will try to do the right thing from now on, to be the Supergirl that everyone on Earth seems to believe in.”

 

He nodded gravely.

 

“Now. It is time to return to Earth. The day you left. I will deposit you in your home, your _/Zehdh/_ , and you can begin to repair what you broke under the Red Kryptonite.”

 

Kara nodded.

 

“Thank you, Brainy, for giving me a chance to fix this. Thank you.”

 

He nodded again, and looked off into the distance. Kara felt the pull of the transmat system and Brainy faded into motes of light.

 

***

 

Kara’s vision cleared and she found herself in _/Zehdh/_. It was unchanged, which of course made sense, since Brainy had deposited her back at the same time she’d left. And in this timeline, she’d never left. She wondered for a moment about the other timeline, the beautiful timeline that had become a living nightmare, the timeline when everyone she loved had died. The one where her absence had caused an effect that caused death and devastation on such a massive scale that she couldn’t entirely comprehend it. She shoved that thought down into the depths of her mind – thinking about it made her want to wail in horror and beg Rao to send her to Death’s empty halls, since that was where she belonged. But she had a job to do, amends to make, things to set right.

 

She went to her bedroom and stripped, taking a long shower during which she prayed to Rao to help her, to give her the strength to make amends, to spend the rest of her life making up for the horror she’d perpetrated in two timelines. She felt nothing from her god but disappointment and a hint of anger.

 

She hung her head in shame, falling to her knees as water poured over her, and prayed ancient prayers, begging for forgiveness. She didn’t deserve the chance to make amends. But she would try, try with all of her might to comfort those she loved. Maybe that would make a difference.

 

She spent almost ten days in seclusion, except when Brainy called her to a rescue or to prevent a crime. She meditated, prayed, and went through the forms of Torquasm-Vo and Torquasm-Rao. When she woke on the tenth morning, feeling she was ready, she put on some robes with her family crest carefully embroidered on the breast. She then tried to settle her thoughts. Lena needed her to explain her lies. Alex needed her to stay away. Just for now, Kara hoped. But either way Kara needed to apologise and explain, and let Alex decide what she should do next. Stay away from National City, perhaps. She would even go to Argo if that’s what Alex wanted. She could live with her people and work on scientific discoveries, even try to find them somewhere to settle forever. It was one way to make amends.

 

She ordered up a huge meal from her replicator and ate it with relish. Then she found her cellphone and called Lena.

 

“Hey,” Lena said, her voice neutral. “What can I do for you?”

 

Kara tuned in her super-hearing, detecting Alex’s heartbeat in the background.

 

“Should I call back later?” she asked.

 

“Don’t bother. I’m leaving.” Alex’s voice cut in harshly. There was a whooshing noise and Lena sighed.

 

“I’m trying to talk her round, Kara. I promise you.”

 

“But you still think I should stay away from her.”

 

“Mmm-hmm,” Lena said.

 

“Okay. Thank you, Lena. You’re the best friend.”

 

“Speaking of which. You haven’t told me where you’ve been hiding. Brainy says you’re rarely in your apartment when he contacts you. And you never did tell me why you needed that transmat portal.”

 

“I… you know what? Why don’t I show you?” Kara said. “Are you busy right now?”

 

Lena hummed.

 

“Well, now that Alex has stomped off, I find myself at somewhat of a loss. Why not?”

 

“Stand by for transmat,” Kara said. She used the transmat system to bring Lena to /Zehdh/.

 

“Well,” Lena said, looking around her in awe. “It’s a little more homely than Superman’s place.”

 

“That was the idea,” Kara said, wryly. “Do you want something to drink?”

 

Lena nodded absently.

 

“Some tea?”

 

Kara nodded, crossing to the wall and dialling Lena’s favourite tea. She turned to find that Lena was standing right next to her, fascinated by the process of replicating the food from thin air.

 

“Is this… a food replicator, like on Star Trek?” Lena asked.

 

“It’s a matter converter. Makes matter into other matter. It can make food, water, medicines, even clothing. But it’s not like ‘Earl Grey, hot’,” Kara said, in her best Picard impression.

 

Lena snorted in amusement.

 

“How does it work?”

 

Kara launched into a detailed description of how the device worked. Lena took out a notebook from somewhere, clearly ready to write everything down.

 

“You don’t need to write this stuff down. I have the schematics right here,” Kara said, smiling. “I was hoping it could be our first collaboration.”

 

Lena’s eyebrow rose.

 

“Collaboration?”

 

“Well, like I said before… I will give you any and all information that I feel will aid mankind. And a device like this – a food replicator – could change the world. Eliminate starvation, eliminate drought. This device - it can change anything into food. No more failing crops, no drought. You can build huge ones that will make water from the air. People can have swimming pools in the Gobi desert. Does that seem like maybe something that L-Corp would like to do, in collaboration with Supergirl?”

 

Lena stared at her.

“You would give me these designs? What do you want in return?”

 

Kara led Lena to the couch nearby.

 

“You really think I want anything in return?” she asked softly. “I know we have… trust issues, now. But I don’t want anything except maybe to improve the way humanity looks at aliens. An endorsement from Supergirl might help to sell more of these in the richer countries of the world.”

 

Lena looked at her, searching her eyes for sincerity. Thankfully she found what she was looking for, and she nodded.

 

“I believe you. Now. Show me the schematics.”

 

Kara smiled.

 

“Let’s do this, Miss CEO.”

 

Lena grinned at her.

 

***

 

Alex got out of bed, huffing at her inability to sleep. She couldn’t even knock herself out with Scotch. She was tempted to fly to M’gann’s for alien alcohol, but she wasn’t sure that Colonel Haley wasn’t having her watched. The woman was suspicious as hell. She hadn’t given up on finding out who Supergirl really was. If she decided to re-use the truth-seeker on everyone, she would find that Alex’s mind could no longer be read. That would not end well for anyone.

 

Alex decided to sit on the windowsill of her apartment until she felt tired. She used to exercise when she couldn’t sleep, but nothing could make her tired these days. Part of her wished that Kara had killed her on the RedK. Then she wouldn’t be here, looking down the face of eternity as a Kryptonian and having to live with the fact that her sister had almost murdered her.

 

She looked up into the sky, a sky which was cloudy and blocked the stars. To normal vision. Not to her, anyway. Not anymore.

 

She looked at the stars she could see in the night sky. The near and the far. Some she could see clearly, as clearly as she could see her own fingers. She counted the planets around each star, eyes roving. Nebulae, pulsars, binary star systems. There were so many things to see, things that Lena had gifted to her with the Harun-El. Lena still wouldn’t tell Alex how she’d managed to stabilise the formula, but it had worked to save her life. She figured that was all she needed to know.

 

She sighed as her eyes searched out the space where Krypton should have been. She remembered the day the light of the explosion had made it to Earth. Kara was 16. She had worked out roughly when the light would reach Earth, and Superman had taken her to the desert to pray to Rao when it happened. Alex had come after her, taking her Dad’s SUV without permission. She’d stopped a short way from Kara, then climbed up several rocky slopes to reach her. She didn’t say a word, simply sitting next to Kara in the lotus position. When the light reached them, Alex took Kara’s hand. Kara continued to pray, her eyes never closing as the light faded. It took another hour for her to break down, and Alex drew her sister… her… Kara, into her arms, holding her until the sobbing stopped.

 

Alex shook her head, trying to push away the feeling, the pain she felt for Kara who had lost everything. Kara didn’t deserve her sympathy. Kara didn’t deserve Alex’s thoughts, not even a little.

 

She swore as she felt her heart swell with the love she had always felt for Kara. She tried to tamp it down, but she couldn’t. No matter what Kara had done to her in her RedK haze, Alex couldn’t not love her.

 

She screamed into the air, a ragged, guttural sound, and it echoed over the city. People from the other end of the city heard the scream and called the police. Alex knew that because she heard them. Because she heard _everything_.

 

She took herself back into the apartment, and the voices crowded in on her. She tried to remember how she’d helped Kara to calm herself, to filter out the noise, but she couldn’t. The voices filled her head and she lay in the corner of the room, pulling her knees in and wrapping her arms around them. She rocked and cried, praying that Rao would listen to her and make it stop. If Rao was her god now, he didn’t listen. It took an hour for her to pass out, her mind entirely overwhelmed and her ears ringing.

 

***

 

Kara hovered high above the world, almost in orbit, her cape flapping in the wind. She listened to everything below her. There were all sorts of sounds down there. Cows in fields, horses galloping, car horns blasting, planes taking off and landing. Kids laughing and crying. Screams and cries from every direction. She kept listening, and then there was a crashing noise, a ripping of metal. It was in National City, and she flew towards it at twice the speed of sound.

 

A crane was collapsing, the metal giving way, and its load was hanging off to one side, ready to fall on the park below. There were kids playing, young workers lounging on the grass as they ate their lunch. Families on picnics. They weren’t going to die. She was determined. She caught the load – what felt like tonnes of steel, maybe a thousand. It strained even her to catch it, but she took the weight and flew the load to where it was supposed to be, a construction site close by. She heard the arm of the crane behind her beginning to give way, knowing she had time to reach it. It wasn’t going to land in the park and kill people, she promised herself. She rushed anyway, moving as fast as she could, but as it turned out, she didn’t need to. A figure in black and green, wearing a mask, caught the arm of the crane and started to fly it towards the construction site, following Kara’s path. Kara took a moment to listen in, hearing Lena’s heartbeat coming from the figure. She smiled and went to help grasp the other end of the crane’s arm, and she and Lena safely landed it on top of the tonnes of steel that the crane had been lifting.  She checked on the crane operator, but he was already all the way down on solid ground.

 

There were cheers and shouts of “Supergirl!” and “Green Supergirl!”, amusingly, and Kara smiled, shaking hands with Lena before flying off, waving at those on the ground.

 

Lena called out to Kara to follow her, and Kara did so, flying into a tunnel hidden in the woods behind National City. Lena flew swiftly through the dim tunnel before slowing down and stopping before a large steel door. She placed her hand in the centre of it and led Kara into a huge room. It was a lab and a space for building devices and even vehicles. In one corner there were several versions of the suit Lena was wearing, along with four other suits – two clearly made for Kara, and two others with the House of El crest, but made for a different body shape than Kara’s. The last ones were in dark greys and blacks.

 

“That’s for Alex,” Lena said, as she noted where Kara’s eyes were focused. “When she comes round.”

 

Kara bit her lip.

 

“I don’t… do you really think she ever will?”

 

“I do,” Lena said, turning Kara to face her. “You two have a bond that’s unbreakable. This is just a bump in the road. Or maybe a mountain. But for you, Supergirl, that’s just something to leap in one bound.”

 

Kara smiled fondly at Lena.

 

“So, when did this happen?” she asked, gesturing at Lena’s suit.

 

“Well, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. You… you made me think, when you told me that you believed in me, that these powers would be in safe hands. And I thought… while I wanted them mostly so I wasn’t frightened all the time… I could use them to help. Not just by rescuing people. I could be a one-woman distribution team for tech like the replicators. I can fix satellites in space. I can do so many things now, thanks to you. I want to use these powers for good.”

 

Kara grinned broadly.

 

“I knew you were a good choice. I mean, the formula was yours – I wasn’t about to tell you that you couldn’t use it. But I trust you. I always have. You might stray into the grey sometimes, but you’re a good person, Lena. That always shines through in you.”

 

Lena looked at her, then she pulled off her mask.

 

“You trust me. But you didn’t tell me.”

 

Kara swallowed.

 

“You want me to try to explain?” she asked softly.

 

“I’d appreciate it,” Lena said.

 

Kara sighed.

*

The conversation was uncomfortable, and Kara grimaced several times as she explained the numerous times she’d wanted to tell Lena, and how she’d either chickened out or thought better of it. Lena accepted it, eventually, especially when Kara explained that she was genuinely terrified of Kryptonite.

 

“I know you said that there were things that could kill humans – millions of them, really. But Kryptonite seems to have only one purpose. To kill Kryptonians. To be honest, it’s such a specific compound that I wonder if it was engineered to kill us by an unknown enemy. Logic dictates that Krypton would contain radioactive materials and plants and poisonous animals that would hurt or kill its indigenous species, but to have one crystal, one compound that seemingly filled the planet’s core? That doesn’t make sense. When Clark told me how much Kryptonite came down with his pod, I was stunned. And the effects on humans! It made most of those it touched in Smallville into weird metahumans, and according to Chloe Sullivan, 90% of them turned evil.”

 

“I’ve met Chloe. Did you know she’s a metahuman herself?” Lena murmured.

 

“Yeah. She kind of went off the rails there a little while ago, and she’s… well, she’s in a metahuman prison. Some of the things she did… Rao. But before all that, Clark relied on her such a lot. She was his rock. Maybe it was the Kryptonite that did that to her, I don’t know.”

 

Lena nodded.

 

“I think… maybe I understand why Supergirl-you was so aggressive with me that day. Though some of what you said was… really hurtful. But I understand. I lied to you all about Sam, and made Kryptonite and other things like the scattering field that would work to neutralise Kryptonian powers. I guess I forget how people won’t understand my actions if I don’t share my reasons.”

 

After the conversation, they cuddled a little the way they’d always done, and it wasn’t awkward, even though Kara knew about Lena’s feelings for her, feelings that she didn’t share. It was enough, it appeared, that Lena knew Kara loved her, even if it was platonically.

 

From then on, Lena and Kara worked as a team half of the time, and Alex and Lena worked together the rest of the time. Lena wouldn’t tell her what they were working on. Lena had promoted Jess to Acting CEO while she got used to her powers and worked on the new inventions that Kara was trickling out. The food replicator was almost ready for production, though it was stuck at FDA approval, since it could replicate medicines. The food and water had tested as safe, but the drugs had to be reproduced one by one and checked. It was going to take a while, but both Kara and Lena were confident that the device would be approved soon in the US, and in countries in the Third World the large versions were already in production to combat drought, after tests on the water they produced showed it to be completely pure.

 

Kara tried to catch a glimpse of Alex now and again, but if her foster sister ever saw her, she glared so hard that Kara flinched and withdrew. It wasn’t time yet, clearly, so Kara did her best to stay away.

 

In the meantime, she rescued people all over the world, and when she did so she found stories that she could use at work. Snapper was confused as to where she was finding out about oppression in the Middle East, child trafficking in Eastern Europe, genocide in Western Africa, and the detaining of those seeking asylum from South America. Her work had been published in many other high-profile newspapers all across the world, and Kara was becoming a minor celebrity. And if Supergirl sometimes came by those areas Kara wrote about and took apart child-trafficking operations or stopped minor wars and brought genocidal dictators to justice, that was to be expected.

 

When Kara was out fixing the world, Lena was patrolling National City in her place, and she was known as Shield. The name was given to her by Cat Grant, from afar. Lena wasn’t too pleased with it, but she was glad to be helping people in National City while Kara moved further afield.

 

Kara and Alex’s reunion was unexpected, when it happened. Kara was flying over National City for a quick patrol after an article on the conflict in the Middle East that had broken open a can of worms concerning one country bribing governments in the First World to ignore Human Rights violations they were perpetrating in another, weaker country. The city was quiet, and she decided to sit on the top of CatCo and watch the sun go down.

 

She heard a whoosh and a familiar heartbeat. She didn’t dare turn around. She didn’t _need_ to turn around. She’d know Alex’s scent, her heartbeat, everything about her anywhere.

 

“Hi,” Alex said quietly.

 

Kara looked down at her fingers, twisting together in worry.

 

“Hi, Alex.”

 

“You’ve been doing some incredible things,” Alex said, quietly.

 

Kara shrugged.

 

“I have a lot to make up for.”

 

There was a deeply uncomfortable silence for a few minutes, and Kara decided to speak. She figured she didn’t have anything to lose.

 

“Are you okay?” she asked quietly.

 

Alex shrugged.

 

“Things have been… different. The powers are an adjustment.”

 

“I remember,” Kara murmured, turning to smile at Alex. Alex looked at her fondly for a moment before stiffening.

 

“Did you want to talk about anything?” Kara asked. She kept her voice soft and level, trying not to scare Alex away.

 

“I… I want to hate you. You nearly killed me. You would have.”

 

“I know,” Kara said, ashamed. She was the only one, aside from Brainy-from-the-future, who knew about the other timeline and Lexie Danvers and how Kara _had_ killed her. Her and so, _so_ many others.

 

“But I know you didn’t mean it. She did, the other you. But then she’s part of you, she’s in there. I don’t know how to handle it. But I… I was ready to kill Supergirl. I was ready to take you down for virtually no reason, as soon as I lost the memory of you being my… who you are. I bear some blame. I’m ashamed and hurt and lost and I wanted to kill you and I wish you’d killed me. I don’t know what to do or how to feel.”

 

Kara looked down at her hands, feet swinging in the empty air below them.

 

“I don’t know how to fix it. I can’t fix it. I can’t make it better. I did what I did, and that part of me that was driving me wanted to do it. I don’t know how to reconcile that with who I am. I don’t know how to make it right with you, with Lena, with anyone else. I guess I should be grateful that I focused on you guys. Fewer casualties that way.”

 

Alex winced.

 

“When I heard… when I heard what Supergirl was doing, when I saw the things you were doing around the world… it reminded me. Reminded me of who you are. I’ve been… I’ve been trying to shake that image of you, the way you looked at me when you were beating me to death. Then I saw you lying on the ground with a bunch of children piled on you in Sudan, all kissing your face and you crying… it made me remember you. The real you. The things you’ve been doing have reminded me of what you always wanted to stand for. What you _do_ stand for. Hope, help, and compassion for all.”

 

Kara said nothing, still staring at her hands. No matter what she did, she didn’t deserve Alex’s forgiveness. How could her actions ever _be_ forgiven?

 

“You’ve done amazing things lately. Saved people with your powers and with your words, and that’s the person I’ve always known you were, and I can’t ignore that any more than I can forget about you almost murdering me. I don’t know how to fix this, but I can’t go on ignoring it. Ignoring you. If nothing else, we need to find a way to work together.”

 

Kara breathed in, closing her eyes.

 

“You don’t have to learn to work with me. When I… after everything that happened, I got some perspective. I have done good here on Earth. A lot. Saved lives, changed lives. I can’t deny that. But that doesn’t mean I have to stay here.”

 

Alex turned and looked at her. Really looked at her, this time. She looked puzzled and sad and frightened and Kara felt like her heart was being torn open when she realised that Alex was afraid of her.

 

“What do you mean?” she asked.

 

“I can leave. I can go away. To Argo, if you want me to leave Earth. Or I can move to another city as Supergirl. Or I can give up my powers and move somewhere on the other side of the world. If I do that, I can never hurt you again. You’ll never have to be scared that I’ll ever come back like her. If I become human, RedK won’t affect me. There are options. Honestly, I think that the world may be safer if I give up my powers. Without the threat of RedK there’s no chance of me going crazy and destroying a city. I mean, I could still go crazy, but I probably won’t manage to hurt many people as a puny human.”

 

Her attempt at levity fell flat. Alex stared at her before looking away, her jaw clenching. The simple truth, however, was that Kara didn’t trust herself any longer, and she did believe that giving up her powers was best. She had the right, she believed. Since she wasn’t changing the past, this decision should be allowed, surely?

 

“Anyway. I guess… I want you to decide. You and Lena. You’re the ones I hurt. You can talk to J’onn, too, I guess, since I ended up outing him last time I was on RedK. But I know you guys are the safest option. You’ll make the right decision.”

 

Alex shifted uncomfortably.

 

“Was there… is there something else you wanted to talk about?” Kara asked.

 

Alex shook her head without looking at Kara.

 

“Okay. I’ll leave you alone. I was going to talk to Lena but if you want to, just let me know. Thanks for helping with this today, Alex. I know you’ll get used to these powers – you were made to be a hero.”

 

She took off slowly and then blasted high into the sky as soon as she’d cleared Alex’s vicinity.


	10. Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena and Kara have a talk, and Alex goes to Lena for advice - and a drink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the absence on posting this. It's a short chapter but I hope to have more written soon. As always, this is for Argyle_s. I hope this brightens your day at least a little.

* * *

 

“You want to give up being Kryptonian? What the HELL is wrong with you?!”

 

Kara looked down at her feet. Lena was once again visiting her in /Zehdh/. Clearly, this time, she wasn’t here for tea and science chat.

 

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Kara said. “It’s a logical choice. I hurt people when I’m exposed to Red Kryptonite. I have done things that are completely unforgiveable. To you, to Alex, to the city, to J’onn. Even James. You all have a right to decide. I… I’ve done good in the past, saved lives. Saved all of your lives, I guess. But now… the city – the world – has you, has Alex. And you have the formula for the Harun-El now. You can change more people if you want. People you trust. I’m not needed, not anymore.”

 

Lena glared at her.

 

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

 

Kara stared. Lena didn’t swear very often.

 

“I love you, Kara. Platonically, romantically, whatever,” she gestured dismissively. “I need you in my life. Alex needs you in her life. _All_ of your friends need you. You are loved, and the things you did on Red Kryptonite? They’re not your fault. Nothing you did is your fault. I told you before – if I’d been hit with something like that? Something that suppressed my inhibitions and made me rage and hurt and not care about what I did and who I hurt? I would hurt so many people. So many. I’ve been hurt often in my life, Kara, and if I wanted to get back at all of those people and didn’t have my conscience holding me back, their lives would be destroyed. Who knows how far I would go? I don’t.”

 

She sighed, running her fingers through her hair.

 

“The point is, yes, you did horrible things. You hurt me emotionally and you hurt Alex physically. You can’t take it back. But you need to stop blaming yourself. You are my best friend, Kara, and you would never hurt anyone if you were in your right mind. You’re sweet and caring and loving and you’re the reason I stayed in National City and the reason, so many times over, that I’m still alive. That’s who you are, not that scary bitch who came to me at LCorp that day, okay?”

 

Kara nodded, biting her lip.

 

“Though I have to admit, she was kind of hot, in an arrogant way.”

 

Kara stared at Lena in horror.

 

“Gotcha,” Lena said, grinning at her.

 

Kara muttered something unpleasant in _Kryptahniuo,_ but Lena just laughed.

 

“So, if you didn’t realise already, I’m not happy with any of the options you gave, other than you staying here. As the hero of National City and my best friend.”

 

Kara nodded, wide-eyed.

 

“You’ve definitely made yourself clear.”

 

“Good,” Lena said, grinning. “Now, let’s talk about omegahedrons.”

 

***

 

Alex flew high above the ocean, trying to clear her head. She was wearing her DEO blacks and had pulled her hood up to disguise her face, should anyone happen to spot her as she was flying around while being not-Supergirl.

 

Kara was right. Flying was a great way to focus your mind. Being up this high, tuning your hearing upward instead of downward… the silence was incredible. And the wind, the clear, cold air, and the feeling of propelling yourself forward in the air. Having powers from the sun was a heady experience. Each morning Alex felt like her body was filled with the sun itself, that it was bursting out of her, lifting her up into the air and letting her fly faster than a jet fighter. There was no way to explain that feeling to someone. She was lucky that Lena had taken the Harun-El compound at the same time as she did. At least they understood each other, understood what this change felt like.

 

Her mind went to Kara again, as it was wont to do these days. She had been struggling hard with everything that happened when Kara was exposed to Red Kryptonite. She loved her sister. No, not her sister. Not really. That’s not what Kara was to her, not anymore.

 

She kept remembering the night Kara attacked her. The things she’d said. The way she’d looked, the pain, the shock. Waking up different. It was all just a muddle in her mind. She hadn’t even had time to process the whole ‘love’ thing.

 

_I fell in love with you on day one, and you told me you’d always protect me_

Every time she thought about it, her heart thumped and her throat went dry. She’d kept pushing it away because there was so much else to think about. But she had to face it, she had realised. After what Kara said, the decision she’d asked Alex to make? Alex knew that she needed to deal with Kara’s feelings for her as well as what she had suggested. Could Alex really make a decision like that? Tell Kara to leave Earth and go back to Argo? Or tell Kara to take away her own powers and go live somewhere on the other side of the world?

 

She didn’t even know if that was something she wanted. She was terrified of Kara. Or, she was terrified of the version of Kara who had come to her apartment that night. But she was also Kara, the girl who fell from the stars into Alex’s life, the girl who had made her life immeasurably better, more interesting, more full. She was the one person who Alex loved without restraint. Alex didn’t know if she meant that in the past tense – that Kara used to be the person she loved without restraint. Alex’s heart and head were divided on whether it was still true or not.

 

She hovered in the air above the Great Barrier Reef, using her vision to look under the water to the thriving life beneath. It was beautiful. She wished Kara was there to see it, and was about to search for her cellphone when she realised what she was thinking.

 

Maybe that answered her question. When she saw something beautiful, the first thing she wanted to do was call Kara.

 

She sighed and headed back to National City, finding Lena’s heartbeat at her penthouse and knocking on the window.

 

Lena opened the door immediately, inviting Alex in.

 

“She talked to you about her stupid fucking idea, I take it?” Lena asked.

 

Alex looked at her, startled.

 

“You think it’s stupid?”

 

“To turn herself into a human? That’s like me wanting to turn myself into a chimp. She’s not human. Changing her DNA to become human is ridiculous. Being Kryptonian is one of the central pillars of her life. And she’s the last real Kryptonian on Earth. I know her mom and some others are on Argo City, but Kara’s always been on her own. God knows Superman didn’t treat her like family.”

 

Alex chewed on the inside of her lip.

 

“I’m thinking about it. Asking her to go back to Argo or to give up her powers.”

 

Lena stared at her, aghast.

 

“I think we need a drink for this.”

 

She poured two drinks from a decanter in her living room and sat on the couch, gesturing for Alex to join her. She passed the second drink to Alex.

 

“Not that I don’t like the taste, but you know this doesn’t do anything for us now, don’t you?” Alex said.

 

“I do know that human-strength alcohol doesn’t work on us anymore. But this is Aldebaran rum. Give it a try,” Lena said.

 

Alex took a sip and had to take a sharp breath in as it burned down her oesophagus.

 

“Hmm. Okay. That’s definitely stronger.”

 

Lena raised an eyebrow and saluted Alex with her glass.

 

“So you’re actually considering this?” Lena asked, brow crinkled. “Taking away who she is? Or sending her away, exiling her from Earth?”

 

Alex shrugged.

 

“In the wrong circumstances, she can be a danger that no-one can stop. And I don’t ever want to feel like this again. Scared that she might kill me because she thinks I’m plotting against her.”

 

“Understandable,” Lena said. “But why would she think that? I mean, why did she think that in the first place? We’ve never talked about it.”

 

Alex took a deep breath.

 

“Because I was. I didn’t know Kara was Supergirl, and from what I could tell she was becoming unstable and dangerous. She burned me with heat vision when we were on a mission in Parthas.”

 

“Why did she do that?” Lena asked softly. There was no judgement on her face.

 

“She… we went in thinking that the aliens were attacking these people who had been transformed into, like, giant red rage monsters. Our intel was faulty. The rage monsters were humans who wanted to hurt aliens. Kara was defending the aliens and I was about to shoot one of them.”

 

“So, she hurt you, but she did it to save someone? Did she hurt you badly?”

 

“No,” Alex admitted.

 

“So tell me about this plotting,” Lena said, watching Alex intently.

 

“So, there was a lot going on, and Colonel Haley was trying to find out who Supergirl was, and the President ordered her to reveal her human alias, but she refused. We thought that she might be a threat, and after Parthas I was sure of it. I… Haley and I were talking about how we should take her down. Supergirl. And I was thinking that I would take her down myself, because she had saved my life so many times.”

 

Alex looked at her drink fixedly.

 

“Okay. So Kara on Red Kryptonite finds out that the woman she loves, the woman who has been at her side since she arrived on Earth, is plotting against her. Is planning to take her down because she’s a threat to National Security or whatever. That was a once-in-a-lifetime situation. The President, Haley, all of it. It doesn’t happen every day. And in all fairness, you were actually plotting against her. And someone dosed her with a poisonous element, Alex. Jack – Jack Spheer, my ex-boyfriend – he made a mistake and ended up testing his product on himself, and his CFO took advantage of it to make him do things that he would never do. I don’t blame him for that. And I don’t blame Kara for what she did on Red Kryptonite. And honestly… I can’t see why you would react any differently. Unless this is more to do with your own feelings about what you were prepared to do to Supergirl when you didn’t have the knowledge of who she was to guide you.”

 

Alex swallowed a mouthful of the Aldebaran Rum, wincing at the burn.

 

“I would have killed her, Lena. And I believed it was the right thing to do. She should have killed me. I deserved it.”

 

“Alex, that’s not true. You made mistakes based on your knowledge at the time. If you’d known that Kara was Supergirl, you would never have done anything of the sort.”

 

“But I did do things like that. Back before Kara joined the DEO. I hunted down aliens and killed them if they resisted. And… looking back, there were a lot of them who probably didn’t do a thing to deserve being hunted by the DEO. Some ended up in Cadmus labs, being dissected and used to make evil shit like the Metallos. She doesn’t know. I did it and I never regretted it until Kara came to work with us. I did evil things and caused the death and torture of so many aliens who didn’t deserve it. She’s not the monster; I am.”

 

Lena moved to sit next to her, and wrapped her arms around Alex as she began to cry silently. Lena made comforting noises and held her until she stopped crying.


	11. Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara and Alex have an unexpected talk, and confessions are made that may begin to clear the air between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot of dense dialogue here, and I am not entirely sure it's very readable. But it does the job that I want it to, so I hope you will enjoy.

* * *

Kara was responding to a call about a car accident involving two eighteen-wheelers when she was met by another flying alien. Or, as Kara normally referred to her, Alex. She was wearing a suit that was mostly black, but accented by gunmetal grey and occasional reds, blues and golds. On her chest was the crest of El. The suit was one of those Lena had showed Kara, albeit slightly modified with extra armour and extra colours.

 

The crest was muted, the colours metallic but understated. The fact that the crest was there, that Alex was wearing it on her chest – it was like a punch in the gut, but somehow… in a good way.

 

The suit had a mask, the same as Lena’s, this time accented in blue. Kara met Alex’s eyes and nodded, and they both shot towards the accident. They each rescued the drivers of the trucks, setting them carefully on gurneys provided by EMTs on the scene. Then they lifted the trucks out of the way, and Alex used her freeze breath to put out a small fire that had broken out in one of the truck’s engines.

 

Kara checked with the EMTs and firefighters on scene before leaving, Alex flying next to her. As soon as they were high enough, Kara spoke.

 

“You look good. The crest suits you.”

 

Alex didn’t say anything for a moment.

 

“We need to talk,” she said quietly.

 

Kara took in a deep breath, trying not to panic. She was terrified, both that Alex would hate her, and that she would ask Kara to give up her powers. She would do it for Alex – she would do anything for Alex – but that didn’t make the prospect any less terrifying.

 

“Where?” Kara asked.

 

“Your apartment,” Alex replied.

 

Kara nodded. They flew across the city shot through the open window of Kara’s appointment at speed. Kara immediately changed into her sweatpants and a loose t-shirt, grabbing 2 bottles of Romulan Ale from the refrigerator and setting them on the table with two glasses. She settled onto the couch, finding Alex standing in the middle of the room, staring at her. Her cheeks were red, and Kara realised belatedly that she had changed at super-speed, but now Alex had super-speed too. Which meant that Kara had just stripped down to her underwear before she pulled on her sweats, and Alex saw the whole thing.

 

“Oh, um… I’m sorry,” Kara said, trying not to stutter. “I forgot you had… you know, the super-speed.”

 

“It’s fine,” Alex muttered. She took her mask off and set it on the coffee table. She was still standing in the middle of the room, and she looked more awkward than she’d ever looked in this apartment.

 

“You, uh, still have some clothes in my room,” Kara said. “If you’d rather change.”

 

Alex swallowed and then nodded, walking at human speed into Kara’s bedroom. She came back a few minutes later, during which time Kara had poured them both a glass of the ale and used a little freeze breath to cool the glasses. She liked the taste of the ale much better than Aldebaran rum. She had never met a Romulan, but had heard that they weren’t a particularly joyful people. But their ale – that tasted like sunshine, and as soon as Kara had a few sips she felt calmer.

 

Alex sat down stiffly on the other end of the couch, and Kara turned towards her, lifting her legs up and grabbing a cushion, which she hugged to her chest.

 

“You asked me to make a decision. About what you should do. I talked it over with Lena. She was pretty adamant that it wasn’t her decision to make. She was pretty mad about it, actually. But I thought about it. I thought about it a lot.”

 

She took a drink from the glass of ale, and her eyebrows went up as the taste hit her taste buds.

 

“That’s amazing,” she murmured.

 

“M’gann’s ordering some in for you and Lena,” Kara said wryly. “I figured you both might need it, since… after you both changed.”

 

Alex rubbed the back of her neck, staring at the bottle.

 

“So, I thought… maybe it would be a good idea. If you went to Argo. Or if you gave up your powers. The things you did… on the Kryptonite. You… the way you looked at me. I’ve never been so terrified. Not when I was drowning in that tank, or when Reign broke my leg, or any of the million times you’ve almost died. I guess… it wasn’t just fear. I was heartbroken, too. I knew it was Red Kryptonite, and I didn’t know Supergirl was you – Kara you. Or at least my head didn’t. But somewhere in there, when I looked in her eyes, with the red veins and that rage and boredom too – I knew I loved her – you – more than anyone, and the fact that you wanted me dead just about broke me.”

 

“I’ll admit, Kara. In some ways, I’d rather you had killed me.”

 

Kara gasped, and she felt tears begin to fall from her eyes.

 

“I’m so sorry, Alex…”

 

“I know,” Alex interrupted wearily. “Please, just let me finish.”

 

Kara nodded, swallowing.

 

“I wanted to die because I didn’t want to live in a world where you wanted me dead. But since then, I’ve realised that this is not that world. You don’t want me dead. You love me. And while it’s still scary that you’re capable of that stuff when RedK is in play, I realised that part of this – a lot of this – was my fault.”

 

“That’s not true,” Kara protested. “It was my fault. I did it, not you.”

 

“Please, Kara,” Alex said again. “Let me finish.”

 

Kara subsided. Alex looked her in the eye for a second before continuing.

 

“When I joined the DEO, I was eager to prove myself. And the way things were done there… it was shoot first, ask questions later. The mentality was that all aliens were dangerous. Now I know that J’onn was trying to change that, but trying to change the mentality of an organisation full of xenophobic assholes – that’s not easy. I was so focused on keeping you safe, keeping the DEO away from you, that I did some awful things. I killed aliens when I could have just locked them up. I locked them up when they’d done nothing at all. I sent them to Cadmus to be experimented on.”

 

Alex’s hands were on her knees and she was staring at the floor. Kara’s heart was stuttering at the admissions Alex was making. She had no idea that Alex had done any of that. But then, perhaps she should have. Alex seemed fine with the idea of shooting Kara out of the sky with Kryptonite after Flight 237, despite the fact that she had done nothing to deserve it. She’d saved hundreds of people on the crashing plane and maybe thousands on the ground. The things Alex was telling her were making her reel. Alex had killed aliens without justification, had sent them off to be tortured. All to protect Kara and her secret.

 

“When I didn’t know you were Supergirl, I pretty much reverted back to that mindset. After Parthas, I was sure you were a threat and that you needed to be brought in. I remember thinking that if you resisted, I would take you down myself, and I would do it quick because of all the times you’d saved me. I remember thinking that and then going on with my day, like it was just an addition to my to-do list.”

 

There was a silence, and Kara looked away as she saw Alex’s hands shaking, so hard that she had to put her glass down to avoid slopping the liquid all over the floor.

 

“You heard me talk to Haley. You heard us making plans to kill you. And you must have been hit with the RedK by then. Honestly, I’m surprised that you didn’t just take out the whole DEO.”

 

Kara looked at her then, and was surprised to see tears rolling down Alex’s face.

 

“You would have killed me,” Kara said simply.

 

It wasn’t a question.

 

“I would,” Alex said. “As soon as J’onn took the memory of you being Supergirl from me, I turned on you. I became a threat to you, just like the DEO has and Colonel Haley has. I’m so sorry, Kara. I never thought I could do that again, never in my most horrible dreams. But I was ready to do it. I was ready to shoot you in the head with a Kryptonite bullet, to make it quick and painless. I was going to do that to an alien who hadn’t actually done a thing wrong. I’m the one who made this happen. If it wasn’t for me becoming an asshole xenophobe, you never would have had a reason to hurt me.”

 

There was silence for a moment, punctuated only by Alex’s small sniffles and her pounding heartbeat.

 

“So, you wanted me to decide if you should exile yourself to Argo or give up your powers. And my answer is - I have no right to decide that. Even if you’d killed me, you wouldn’t have been to blame. I betrayed you, and I turned into someone who would kill you because of a perceived threat. I always thought of myself as your protector, but after all this… You deserve better. You shouldn’t go to Argo or give up your powers. You’re not human and you shouldn’t pretend to be. You are a force for good here on Earth, Kara Zor-El, and even if things are rough right now, the world will remember how you’ve helped them, how many people you’ve saved. How everyone you meet is so struck by you that they try to be better people. How you brought a whole city out of brainwashed slavery with only your heart and your hope.”

 

“Alex, that’s not…”

 

“It’s all true, Kara. The things I did, and the things I said about you. You’re amazing, Kara. You don’t know that, I know. You don’t believe in yourself, but you do believe in the goodness of other people. You even believe in me, and I don’t deserve that.”

 

“Of course I believe in you,” Kara said quietly. “I can’t say I’m not disturbed by the things you’ve done. If you did them to keep me safe… I feel like you misunderstood me. The way Jeremiah misunderstood all of us – you, me, Eliza. He thought that by working with Cadmus he was saving us. And you… these things you did. All those people you hurt? Why would you think I would want that?” Kara asked, almost pleading.

 

Alex winced.

 

“I… I wasn’t thinking about that. I was just terrified that they would take you to Cadmus. J’onn and I had an agreement that he would keep you safe. I know that I fucked up. I’ll have all of those deaths, all that torture… I’ll have them all on my conscience forever.”

 

“Alex… you know me. You know me better than anyone on this planet or any other. You know that I would have died in any one of those aliens’ places. You know I would never have allowed you to do any of those things, had I had any idea what you were doing. You know that it would only hurt me if I knew what you were doing for me. And you’re wrong about those deaths being on your conscience. Knowing what I know now, they are on my conscience too, and I’ll never be able to forget that burden. All the people who died, and all of the people left behind who lost the people they loved. Not only that… you sent people to Cadmus, real people, and Cadmus cut them up and used their parts to make weapons, Alex. Weapons that hurt others. Weapons that hurt people we both care about; weapons that hurt me. I can’t understand why you would do those things, Alex. And to do them in my name? I… I don’t know if I can ever really handle that.”

 

Alex stared down at her feet.

 

“I… there’s no way I can ever make up for that, Kara. I don’t even know how I would begin. But I can promise you that I will do anything and everything I can to make up for it, for the rest of my life, which apparently is going to be really, really long now.”

 

Kara looked away from her, and a picture of Lexie Danvers’ face - pale, with cyan lips, saying goodbye to one of the loves of her life as she died - appeared in her mind. Lexie was still her Alex, and Kara’s selfishness had killed that version of Alex and would have inadvertently killed millions of others. Maybe billions, considering what the Monitor had said to Brainy in that other lifetime. What Alex had done in this timeline – it didn’t remotely measure up to what Kara had done. And given the fact that the multiverse was real, Kara knew that all of those deaths _had_ happened in one timeline, and though Kara had fixed it for herself, at least, it was likely that at least a remnant of that timeline, all that suffering, remained. People had suffered and died all because of one selfish decision of Kara’s. At least Alex had been trying to protect her, however misguided her actions had been.

 

“The thing is, Alex. That while I would never – _could_ never condone what you did to protect me, the truth is that I’ve done so much worse, and for selfish reasons. Not to protect anyone, but to make myself happy. I thought… I thought if I wasn’t here, if I’d never interfered in your life, then you would have a happy life. But really I just wanted to be on Krypton, to save it, to live happily with my birth family. I wanted not to have all of these burdens. I wanted not to be Supergirl.”

 

Alex was staring at her in confusion.

 

“What are you talking about?” she asked, brow furrowed.

 

“I’m talking about how, after the RedK… I asked Lena for a transmat portal. I used it. I sent myself out into space, as far as the portal would take me, and I used my Legion ring to take me back to the day Krypton exploded. I persuaded my younger self to hide from our parents, and then I fixed the force field around Argo so my dad didn’t have to die. Of course, that Kara ceased to exist then. Another Kara, she lived her life on Krypton and married Thara. Until she started having dreams about people on a planet called Earth. Cat Grant. Lexie Danvers. Susan Vasquez. Winn Schott. James Olsen. Barry Allen. She saw each one of them die. Flight 237 to Geneva went down with no survivors. It hit the L-Corp building – abandoned since Lena Luthor’s death on the Venture – and thousand of people on the ground died too.”

 

“Kara, I… is this real? This happened? You did this?”

 

Kara nodded, ashamed.

 

“What happened?”

 

“My family – my mom and Thara, mostly – they took me into a medical facility and were trying to treat my delusions, which was what they thought was wrong. But then Brainy showed up. He gave me a chance to undo it all. To go back to when Krypton was about to explode and stop my earlier self from hiding our younger self.”

 

Alex squinted, confused.

 

“What with the who?”

 

Kara laughed, surprised that she still could.

 

She wrote a brief timeline on a piece of paper at super-speed and showed it to Alex.

 

“Okay. So… you killed everyone you know on Earth by not being here,” Alex said, “so that you could have a happy life? That was your only reason?”

 

Kara looked at her for a moment before lowering her eyes.

 

“I thought that if I wasn’t here… you would all be better off. That your lives would be so much happier if I hadn’t landed here and changed your lives.”

 

Alex swallowed.

 

“You thought we’d be better off without you? How well did that work out for you?”

 

Kara looked up, eyes filling with tears.

 

“I watched you all die. All of you. All in incidents I had stopped, or things that happened because I wasn’t there. Everyone. And Brainy said that the timeline had to be fixed or the Monitor might erase me from existence. Because me not being here was the catalyst for all sorts of horrible things, and millions or even billions would have died.”

 

“So, a good plan all round?” Alex said blandly.

 

Kara looked up at her ruefully.

 

“As mistakes go, we don’t go small, do we?”

 

“We should come with a warning,” Kara said, holding out her glass. Alex clinked hers against Kara’s and they both went silent for a while.

 

“So what now?” Kara asked quietly.

 

Alex closed her eyes for a moment.

 

“I don’t know,” she said. “I love you Kara, and I always have. I did horrible things to protect you. But you did a horrible thing to protect me; to save me and others from the things you thought you’d done to destroy my life. In terms of body count… you win. But you did your thing to save us all, and you didn’t know that you were killing anyone by doing it. I did. I knew. I chose to kill and maim aliens and send them to their torture and death. Who do you think is the worst, here?”

 

Kara sighed.

 

“It’s not a competition. We both screwed up, a lot. I nearly killed you. You were going to kill me. I tried to protect you and make your life better, and ended up almost killing millions. You were trying to protect me and you killed people. Does it matter whether it was on purpose or not? We did these things for love, and we screwed it all up completely. I love you, Alex, and I can’t stand the idea of not having you in my life. I don’t care in what capacity. Sister, friend… more. I love you and I will take anything that you offer. But please don’t leave me. You’re still the only reason I’ve ever felt at home on this planet.”

 

Alex lifted her head and turned to look at Kara.

 

“We both made mistakes. Monumental, stupid, devastating mistakes. And… I know that the Red Kryptonite thing wasn’t your fault. I know that. Someone did that to you. And I was your target because of actions of my own. But I was also under the influence of mind alteration. Which I did to protect you. I guess… we have both been trying to look after each other, however misguidedly. I’m sorry for what I threatened you with, Kara. I’m sorry that it ever got to that point. I’m sorry I blamed you for things that weren’t your fault. And… it’ll take a while for me to get over the Red Kryptonite thing. Part of me is still terrified of you.” Alex sighed, running her hand through her hair. Kara couldn’t help but notice the golden sunlight reflecting from Alex’s hair, the way it haloed her. She looked incredibly beautiful.

 

Alex looked up right then, and whatever she saw in Kara’s expression made her blush and look away.  She bit her lip and took a deep breath before turning back to Kara, still blushing slightly.

 

“You… you’ve always been the most important thing to me, Kara. And that hasn’t changed. Even though we’ve had our problems, and I admit I messed up when Maggie and I were together. I was so excited about having a girlfriend that I neglected you. We can talk about that sometime if you like. The thing is, I don’t want to be apart from you either. I don’t want to have a life that doesn’t have you in it. So… let’s start things a little slow. We can work together with Lena and Brainy. I’m quitting the DEO. I’m Kryptonian now, and if they try to use the Truth Seeker on me again they’ll find out, and Rao only knows what they’ll do to me. So I’m quitting. As for seeing each other outside of that… we’ll do some social stuff with our friends. But I don’t want to be alone with you for a while. Not until I’m not scared of you anymore. Does that… does it make sense?”

 

Kara sighed in relief.

 

“Yes, it does. I don’t want you to be scared of me. That’s just… it’s the worst thing possible. I would never hurt you if I were in my right mind.”

 

Alex nodded.

 

“Ditto. I was going to kill you, Kara. We’re even. I just have some very graphic memories of what happened, and I need some times to handle those.”

 

Kara nodded.

 

“And what about… the other thing?” she asked, wincing.

 

“The… the mate, thing?” Alex asked, face flushed. “I… um… I need some time, on that. Right now I have so many feelings that I don’t know how to sort through them. I can’t promise anything to you, except that I love you, and you’re still the most important person in my life.”

 

Kara nodded, looking at her shoes.

 

“Thank you. For not calling me a freak or being disgusted. I know these things aren’t the same, on Krypton and on Earth. So I really get it if you don’t feel that way. I’m just relieved that you’re even willing to think about it.”

 

Alex looked at her briefly.

 

“I would never dismiss you that easily, Kara.”

 

There was another silence. Kara remained still, mind whirling. Eventually Alex shifted, before standing up.

 

“I’m going to go, now, but we can still talk on the phone or whatever. And I’ll see you for Supergirl stuff. I’m not leaving you, I promise.”

 

Kara gave her a small smile.

 

“Take care of yourself, will you?” Kara asked.

 

“Hey, I’m Kryptonian now. And I don’t plan on rushing into any situations without backup, so I should be fine. You take care of yourself, and keep doing what you’re doing, okay? The world needs Kara Danvers and her words and her heart just as much as it needs Supergirl.”

 

Kara nodded, and Alex picked up her mask, heading into Kara’s bedroom and coming back seconds later in her super-suit. She nodded to Kara before opening the window and blurring out at high speed.

 

Kara sat back in her chair, hugging a cushion to her chest. Alex wasn’t leaving her. Alex had forgiven her. Alex still wanted to have Kara in her life, and was willing to consider the idea of a romantic relationship with her. All in all, the results of this surprise conversation were far more positive than she would ever have imagined.

 

She sat there for a while before sending Lena a message asking her to come by if she had some time. She needed to work through all of this with something, and her best friend was the person she needed right then.

 

Lena replied with a quick message.

 

_Be there soon_

As Kara waited for Lena to transmat into her apartment, she pulled some ice cream from the freezer and sat down again, smile growing on her face as she thought about Alex being in her life again. The smile didn’t leave her face for hours.


End file.
